t I'll ask but just to clarify when you say "prints" meaning like actually physical paper prints correct?
Yes. Prints is a physical printed copy on paper that you can hold in your hand.
When mshchem says "digital c print." or "optical print" that is just a different way of making these physical prints. Optical printing shines light through the negative onto photosensetive paper, which is then developed. It's "wet" process, not like an inkjet printer.
Digital C prints are also a wet process, (C or C-tone means Continuous Tone. "Continuous" because It doesn't do microscopic pixels like an inkjet) but instead of shining light through the negative onto the photographic paper an image is projected from the digital file scanned from the negative.
When I drop off color film at a lab (there's a good one locally, I'm lucky) I will usually pay for the developing and get scans done right there. I scan at home now, but when I started with film that's always what I did. Then I'd look through the scans, prepare any I thought were worth printing, and send them back to be printed at a larger size. That way I always had digital copies to share places like here or with friends who only ever see pictures on their phones, and when I made "art" I could get a great wet print at a larger than 4x6 size cropped just how I liked it.
90% of my photos good enough to be seen are just seen online, but for the ones I really like the print is my ultimate goal. A really good print, in person, is almost always better looking than it is on a random computer monitor. I like the look of the digital c prints I get from that lab and still use them for that even on negatives I developed and scanned at home.
Many places like wal mart that still do developing use a "minilab", which is the sort of machine that does a lot of stuff for you, it's like what used to be in every drug store in the 90s. Modern ones are updated to do digital prints, but the technology for scanning film kind of died off a long time ago so they're digitally antiquated technology. They don't really do very good scans as the process is automated and as hands off as possible. They are OK, especially for small prints only, but only OK. So you'll get a pile of 4x6 prints to show your friends and then it's all done. If that's all you're doing then fine, but then you're limited in how much you'll grow as a photographer. So don't use a place where you won't get your negatives back.
If you spend time here you'll find these madmen who have darkrooms in their homes. or access to them elsewhere. A great many of the members print black and white at home directly from the negatives, old-school. A few do color as well, though B&W is more common. They are keeping the all-analog art alive and some make some pretty amazing prints. If you ever want to do this (or if you ever have friends who do it and will print for you, or a local community darkroom you can work in, or a local club, or a community college photography class that has a darkroom) you will definitely need your negatives. You might even decide to scan at home in the future, so you can get a really killer scan of a favorite picture you had scanned lower res at the lab... so a lab that returns negatives is a good thing.