Python Getting Started

Python Install:

Many PCs and Macs will have python already installed.

To check if you have python installed on a Windows PC, search in the start bar for Python or run the following on the Command Line (cmd.exe):

To check if you have python installed on a Linux or Mac, then on linux open the command line or on Mac open the Terminal and type:

If you find that you do not have Python installed on your computer, then you can download it for free from the following website: https://www.python.org/

Python Quickstart

Python is an interpreted programming language, this means that as a developer you write Python (.py) files in a text editor and then put those files into the python interpreter to be executed.

The way to run a python file is like this on the command line:

Where "helloworld.py" is the name of your python file.

Let's write our first Python file, called helloworld.py, which can be done in any text editor.

print("Hello, World!")

Simple as that. Save your file. Open your command line, navigate to the directory where you saved your file, and run:

The output should read:

Congratulations, you have written and executed your first Python program.

Python Version

To check the Python version of the editor, you can find it by importing the sys module:

Example
Check the Python version of the editor:

import sys

print(sys.version)