Important: The cloned environment will most likely become unusable when you update Pro to a newer main version (e.g. It should be something like C:\Users\\AppData\Local\ESRI\conda\envs\arcgispro-p圓-clone. Do so and also note down the path where the cloned environment has been installed appearing below the name. Installing the clone will take some time (you can watch the individual packages being installed within the "Manage Environments" window and you may be prompted to restart ArcGIS Pro to effect your changes) when it's done, the new environment "arcgispro-p圓-clone" (or whatever you choose to call it - but we'll be assuming it's called the default name) can be activated by clicking on the button on the left. Then go back to "Project" -> "Python", click on "Manage Environments", and then click on "Clone Default" in the Manage Environments dialog that opens up. Therefore, we recommend that before performing the following steps, you exit Pro and restart it in admin mode by doing a right-click -> Run as administrator. In the past, students sometimes had problems with the cloning operation that we were able to solve by running Pro in admin mode.
So we first have to create a clone of the default Python environment and make the active environment of ArcGIS. I'd suggest updating to the latest version of ArcGIS Pro (or at least 2.5). Since version 2.3 of ArcGIS Pro, it is not possible to modify the default Python environment anymore (see here for details). Within Pro, you can navigate to the "Project" menu and then choose "Python" to access the Python package and environment manager of the ArcGIS Pro installation.
Spyder is the easiest IDE to install for Python 3 development as we can install it from ArcGIS Pro. In order to access Python 3, we’ll need to open the conda box, and to do that we will need a command prompt with administrator privileges.
We’ll cover the conda environment that ArcGIS Pro uses for Python 3 in more detail in Lesson 2, but for now it might be helpful to think of conda as a box or container that Python 3 and all of its parts sit inside. Now that we’re all warmed up with some Python revision and a few clues about the changes between Python 2 and 3, we’ll start getting familiar with Python 3 in ArcGIS Pro by exploring how we write code and deploy tools just like we did when we started out in GEOG 485.