[bardan]

If they are unable to use a shell, don't understand environments etc. I would push them onto some specific IDE/plugin combination that creates a new virtualenv, handles PATH etc. for every new project.

Dealing with environments and understanding how different parts of the filesystem relate to each other is its own pretty steep learning curve. You wouldn't want them to get tripped up on that while they are learning to program, so I think I would opt to teach the two as entirely different concepts and not mix them at first.

No idea if an appropriate IDE/plugin combination exists! Surely there is one.

[promer]

One suggestion that someone endorsed in another comment is to use VS Code. This would not be my preferred choice, but it would be useful to run an experiment in which students who are new to code start by installing it and following its suggestions about how to configure a working environment. One advantage with this approach is that it introduces students to a text editor.

A second alternative is the Idle environment that is included with every official install of Python from python.org. I have not used it much and I've never tried to teach a course with it. But it comes from the most trustworthy source in this complicated environment.

I'd be very interested in hearing about experience using these to start learning from the very beginning or using them to teach a course for people who are just getting started.