Ok I haven't installed Python myself this way, but, does it set up PATH for you properly? How about pip, does it add pip to PATH? Often things will tell you to type `pip install` rather than `python -m pip install` so there's a potential source of confusion pretty early on too.
(Currently, I tell people to install chocolatey then use that to install Python because choco does take care of PATH for both Python & pip. If Windows app store Python install takes care of all of this maybe I'll try suggesting this next time and see how it goes.)
Also, let's suppose you get Python from Windows app store. Great, you have installed Python 3.9! You are doing the tutorial, just lovely, now in a week you want to make a Discord bot! Great first project. Uh oh, RED Discord Bot requires Python 3.8 (3.9 introduces breaking changes for some of its dependencies). How much more trouble you are now in because you have to install two versions of Python at the same time! If only you had waited to install any version until you were ready to start your first local project. (Based on actual events)
As far as IDEs go, well, in Pycharm you are asked, do you want to set up a project? Huh? What's a project? (Later on: well, you can't just open a file from Windows Explorer, you need to open your entire project! Well, isn't THAT confusing!) Then you have to answer about a venv. What's a venv? Oh, shit, I made the folder in the wrong place, let me move it, omg, nothing works anymore, oh, I guess that "venv" thing was kinda important to know about after all, well, shit...Ok, so again, maybe don't jump all the way to Pycharm as your first IDE but then I just have to ask why are you using an IDE at all when replit would do just fine? Then you're going to have loyalty to a tool that's worse than Pycharm and not want to switch once you are ready to use the right tool.
> But again, maybe I'm just way to detached from your typical absolute beginner to even remotely understand any of these issues.
I think this is pretty likely; if you haven't helped a friend start from literal scratch in the past year, it's pretty hard to realize just how confused people can be. And a LOT of people have tried things before and given up in frustration because they remembered how painful the setup was. So that leaves them with messes on their computers and also psychological scars of "oh my god not another setup, please not another setup, don't make me do another setup...."
Plus, if you have always had someone to ask for help then it's hard to appreciate just how painful setups can be when you're stuck on your own for them. If something breaks, no one's going to fix it for you, it's just broken, and you're just alone, and you feel REALLY goddamn stupid because as your comment points out, setups seem like they ought to be trivial. But they really just never are.