What is a "default Python installation"?
Upon installing Anaconda / Miniconda, there is a prompt that reads:
Where the second tick box has something about "Register Anaconda3 as my default Python 3._" The image says 3.8 but that's just because I couldn't find an image that said 3.9.
I'm wondering what exactly this does to my system and what exactly it means by "default Python 3.8". Having selected that option, it doesn't seem like anything on my path is edited, and in fact, calling py in my terminal doesn't default to this unless I actually specify that I want Anaconda in my path, so I'm really unsure as to how this links to any other programs like mentioned, such as PyCharm.
Also, is there a point to having both Anaconda's Python 3.9 installed and having the classic Python 3.9 from the Python website installed at the same time? It seems to me like Anaconda's Python 3.9 is simply a better and more versatile version of the classic Python 3.9, but I could be wrong and am unsure as I'm really new to this. As far as I can see, however, Anaconda gives users the ability to install any other version of Python through the command line and use their own environment manager, which seems to just be an upgraded version of pip if I'm not wrong?
Windows uses a registry to manage system configuration, including entries determining what program will open files with a particular extension. It seems to me that Anaconda is offering to create a registry entry that will associate *.py files with the base Python in your installation.