r/learnpython • u/Artistic-Army4423 • 7d ago

Virtual Environment and Python

I have started learning python and decided to use pycharm as an editor. I want to know anything which will help me in this journey.

My main question is => I don't get "virtual environment" thing with python. I cloned a repo and opened it in pycharm, it says "No python interpreter configured for <repo-name>" and then suggested to create virtual environment.

I want to hear things from experience devs.

thank you.

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u/Confident_Hyena2506 7d ago

If you don't have any python then you can't run any python.

And you will need lots of different versions of python for different projects - virtual env is just a way to organise them.

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u/Artistic-Army4423 7d ago

alright, I feel it's kind of similar to node_modules in JS repos. Also, so there are other things as well which can do similar things, I will check them out

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u/Discordbothost 5d ago

node_modules is a pretty good mental model. the main differences: a venv also pins which python interpreter runs, not just the packages, and python doesn't pick it up automatically from the folder like node does, you either activate it or point your editor at .venv. requirements.txt (or pyproject.toml) is the package.json part. if you want the npm-ish feel, uv does it: uv init, uv add requests, uv run main.py and it handles the venv for you