I just do a venv inside the venv so I can target several Python versions. I also use Jupiter for C#, Clojure, and Julia. I wish the Clojure integration was as good as the others I listed.
I’m to the point now where if anything other than venv/pip is required I won’t use it. Unfortunately there are many things that insist on conda.
Conda isn’t perfect but takes on a lot of problems that pip doesn’t deal with at all. Regular conda is really slow these days but you can use mamba instead or just configure conda to use the libmamba solver and it’s much nicer.
The folks at prefix.dev seem to be building some pretty cool drop in replacements for conda too.
I’m to the point now where if anything other than venv/pip is required I won’t use it. Unfortunately there are many things that insist on conda.