Just press Ctrl+F5 instead of F5 and you can run your programs step-by-step, no breakpoints needed. Once you're done with hello-worlds, select View → Variables and see how your programs and shell commands affect Python variables. (You can also use a separate Python installation, if necessary.) The initial user interface is stripped of all features that may distract beginners.
Thonny comes with Python 3.7 built in, so just one simple installer is needed and you're ready to learn programming.