User FAQs

1) What is Anaconda ?
It is a platform that contains everything you need to get started writing and distributing python applications.

2) What does the Anaconda platform include ?
It includes Python plus a large number of useful libraries (numpy, pandas).
It includes 2 IDEs called "Jupyter Notebook" and "Spyder".
It includes a package manager and environment managed called Conda.

3) What are the main differences between the Spyder IDE and the Jupyter Notebook ?

4) What is PYPI
PyPI stands for Python Package Index.
It is the official repository for Python packages, maintained by the Python Software Foundation.

link - pypi.org 

When you run pip install <package_name>, your system fetches the package from PyPI by default.

5) What is Conda ?
Conda is a package and environment manager, written in python, that allows you to install conda packages inside a conda environment.
Conda is an alternative to pip, but cannot consume PyPI packages.
One advantage is that it ensures consistent environments, which also means that installing is slower.
A second advantage is that it can consume non-Python packages, such as R packages or binaries (e.g. Visual Studio Runtime libraries).

6) What is Miniconda ?
Miniconda is a distribution of a conda base environment that contains the conda package manager and not much more.
This base #environment allows users to create new conda environments, install conda packages from channels and build conda packages.