Best Python Setup How To Code In

Using libraries help us work quickly, and allow us not to reinvent the wheel every time we sit down to code.

However in order to match up with the Codecademy course on Python 2, we are leaving this article up as legacy instructions.

Much of this guide is still relevant if you go to install a version 3 in the future, and as of this writing Python 2.7 is still available for installation.

Best Python Setup How To Code In

Now that youve learned how to code in Python, lets go through the process of setting up your development environment on your computer so that you can write your own applications.

This article will walk you through how to set up Python and execute code on your own computer.

Sounds intimidating, but there are some nice tools to help you out that well introduce you to.

While Codecademy is excellent for teaching lessons, it also has limitations.

For instance, its difficult to create large projects and share them with the world using only the tools found in Codecademys Python course.

Now, youre going to write and run actual programs on your computer.

This may require that you unzip the file first depending on the version of the installer you downloaded.

Follow the instructions provided by the installer to complete your Python installation.

It is virtually impossible for a human to write in machine language and each processor has its own version.

This interpreter converts your human-readable Python code into instructions that the computer can act on.

On Windows, search for a program called cmd and then launch it If youre on a Mac or a Linux environment look for and launch the program terminal.

You should have a command-line prompt that looks similar to this.

Go ahead and type some simple stuff in and watch Python work right in front of you.

Lets exit out. Well make our own files and return to the command line to run those.

Any text editor will work but may require some additional setup.

Save it, making sure the file name ends with a.py extension.

Well name our file first.py for this example.

Pull up your terminal again and locate the directory in which you saved your python file.

Use the cd command to get there.

If youre rusty on how to locate and change directories, refer to our Learn the Command Line course).

Then type python first.py.

Your terminal window should look something like this.

If youre seeing errors or nothing at all, make sure youre in the same directory as your code, and that your code has a print statement that gets executed.

Lots and lots of work, so much so that its useful to have a little help from others.

Thanks to the very open culture of programming, there are many open source libraries out there for you to use.

Best Python Setup For Mac