> "I am an experienced Python programmer. I often have to collaborate with people who are not. There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible."

I too regularly have to do the same thing, but I have absolutely no issues getting newcomers onto the python ecosystem. You download the installer, you run it, and it works. Or you apt/yum install it with no issues.

Setting up a dev environment for them though is where some hassle comes. VSCode being a particularly bad one in that regard. But with Pycharm, newcomers are on boarded in a matter of minutes.