Ease of use. I run outreach events and when you have sporadic internet access, being able to give new programmers an exe to install Python with a load of useful

Ease of use. I run outreach events and when you have sporadic internet access, being able to give new programmers an exe to install Python with a load of useful packages is a godsend. Also, it takes a lot of the pain out of setting up a Python environment on Windows when you need funny packages that require compilation (e.g OpenCV). I've been to enough software carpentry talks where people nod and smile, and then promptly ignore the "how to be a responsible developer" advice. They don't care. They just want to run Python and plot some stuff or classify some data without worrying about multiple CLI tools. People seem to accept Anaconda because it comes across as a monolith and it's easier to understand for new programmers than virtualenvs and worrying about pinning pip installs. That said, I don't use Anaconda on Mac or Linux.