Virtual environments are not just for conflicting requirements. I write code for clients on my laptop and don't want to clog up my packages directory with project specific libraries that I'll never use myself. Once the project is done and I turn code over to a client, I can delete the virtual env and all the installed libraries. Virtual envs also allow me to have multiple versions of Python installed on my machine.
This discussion is a lot like version control. How many people made daily (hourly) duplicates of project folders before learning the benefits of version control?
Re:Why Is Python Growing So Quickly?
by mixmastamyk on Thursday September 14, 2017 @06:48PM
(#15253121)
A use case that newbs need not concern themselves with.
You normally won't get a version control lecture during every programming language tutorial either.
I wish this would die, it just scares off newbies. In my twenty years of Python I encountered conflicting reqs once or twice. It's easy to direct folks to the documentation in those circumstances rather than cramming it down every newbie's throat---YAGNI.
Now that pip can install with --user and containers are popular, the problem isn't even possible in production in many circumstances.