> i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before
You want us to believe you couldn't overcome the puddle-deep challenge of installing an IDE and using Pip or Node in the past, but now you're actually learning how to write functions?
Cool for you if true I guess but I'm pretty seriously skeptical
I can sort of buy this, honestly. When was the last time you picked up a new language with unfamiliar tooling? Especially something older that won't hold your hand.
A lot of the most miserable parts of getting started coding have nothing to do with programming and everything to do with like, trying to apt-install the right compiler version or figure out which build headers you need or some other equally trivial bullshit that gets in the way of writing code.
[flagged]
Python environment management is notoriously reticulate. I can totally imagine that they got stuck on some path bullshit so that the installed packages were on a different Python than the one they launched in the IDE. I've been using and configuring computers since they had DIP switches and if I were teaching someone to code manually I would absolutely let them use Claude to get their environment set up.