I have never broken my Python installation on Windows (official installer) despite recklessly installing anything. If I had broken it, I would have just uninstalled and reinstalled.
While not familiar with macOS (topic of this article), I think the Mac installer works the same.
On Debian of course you can cause great damage because the system Python is used for critical system functions. This is silly, I think the system python should be an isolated install in /usr/sbin. Better yet, move back to Perl for the system.
This is a good point and something I hadn't thought about. I'm also a happy Windows user, and have never had a problem with Python installations. But like you say, Python isn't baked into the system.
I do use one piece of commercial software that includes Python. You can see the installer saying "installing Python." I suppose it should fall on the OS and software vendors to not abuse the infrastructure... "to whom much is given, much is expected," but maybe too much to expect.
To be clear, there's absolutely nothing broken about the system Python in the article. There is just a shell alias causing the anaconda version of Python to be launched instead when you type `python3` at the command prompt...
While not familiar with macOS (topic of this article), I think the Mac installer works the same.
On Debian of course you can cause great damage because the system Python is used for critical system functions. This is silly, I think the system python should be an isolated install in /usr/sbin. Better yet, move back to Perl for the system.