The title is inaccurate, if you write "python" in a Terminal and you don't have Python installed, the Windows Store will launch and show you the Python app/installer from the store.
There will be no Python already installed or included with Windows 10.
Once you discover that you need to get Python, you are quickly faced with many choices. Will you download an installer from python.org? Or perhaps a distribution such as Anaconda? The Visual Studio installer is also an option. And which version? How will you access it after it’s been installed? You quickly find more answers than you need, and depending on your situation, any of them might be correct.
We spent time figuring out why someone would hit the error above and what help they need. If you’re already a Python expert with complex needs, you probably know how to install and use it. It’s much more likely that someone will hit this problem the first time they are trying to use Python. Many of the teachers we spoke to confirmed this hypothesis – students encounter this far more often than experienced developers.
So we made things easier.
First, we helped the community release their distribution of Python to the Microsoft Store. This version of Python is fully maintained by the community, installs easily on Windows 10, and automatically makes common commands such as python, pip and idle available (as well as equivalents with version numbers python3 and python3.7, for all the commands, just like on Linux).
I still remember when I was a Python newbie. Just getting it set up was an endlessly frustrating experience. I had to choose between 2.7 and 3, and of course I chose python 3 but then my hello world script failed with a confusing error message. I had copied it straight from a get-started-with-python tutorial. Of course I assumed that I must not have installed it correctly (it turned out that the problem actually was the print statement needed parentheses, which became a requirement in python 3 but I had no way of knowing).
This will help me get my friends into Python, which is great!
While they might be targeting newbies, I find this type of work to be great for enthusiasts and hobbyist as well.
I'm mostly familiar with Python, I dabbled in it for a number of years and helped a friend start using it but don't use it for work or personal projects anymore. Occasionally I have a need for it and because I use it infrequently I have to check my environment and update/reinstall it before I proceed.
Have a Store App that updates and maintains itself reduces that friction for me and I can just go play. The same goes for other OSS like the Arduino IDE, and Inkscape.
This is weird because "making it easier" seems a bit like screwing over people who want more control and specifics. MS is relatively new at packaging open source and doesn't seem to have much experience in the phenomenon of official packages being not what you want.
I think this is wonderful for people who are interested in learning programming. Right now one of the biggest hurdles to learning programming is just getting the damn environment set up. Why does it have to be so hard? How many people never learn to program because they can't get "hello world" to print out?
This could make it extremely easy. "What programming language should I use?" "Learn Python." "How do I install it?" "Through the Windows installer." Boom, done. They're off to the races.
People who want control and specifics are advanced enough to figure out how to get that themselves.
I very much agree and love how the programming language AutoIt does it. When I was starting out, both C and Java took several frustrating hours to set up (don't get me started on requiring environment variables to be manually changed). However, after a basic installation, AutoIt gives its au3 files a right-click context menu option to compile to an exe. It also gives you a shortcut to a help file that contains basic examples, a complete list of language concepts, and a complete list of all first party functions and a page on every single one complete with an example of how to use it.
I'm not sure. It's not really all that different from any Linux distro (or macOS) having a specific version of the python binaries in their own repositories. Basically, this is for those that either need the hand held manner of doing it, respect Microsoft's vetting, or any other reasons.
For those that want to install the most recently released or a specific version number of the python installer, there's still the obvious channels and those people that would seek it out will know how to find it the normal way already. It's fine.
I could very easily see a scenario in which your own version has a conflict with the official one. For example maybe you need to get really careful about where the install stub is on PATH.
The possibility of a built-in one not being what you want adds a whole category of issues that wouldn't surface before. Maybe also those alternative ways of packaging die out due to lack of interest.
Use your imagination. Sometimes the machines are not set up and maintained by you. Sometimes you write scripts and run them far away. Sometimes someone else's script mucks with PATH. Now there is an ambiguity about which python runs.
Ask folks who ran into this with an old release installed by default, as in a Mac. Some of them appear to be on the thread.
I think this is a healthy decision. It minimizes frustration on programming first steps and is, at worst, a minor frustration for people who know what they’re doing and launch the store on one by accident.
There will be no Python already installed or included with Windows 10.