Python 101: Getting it

This post is part 1 of Get started with Python programming series, in which I do my best to share my experiences in learning python and hope that this becomes some sort of guide to help you become a Python programmer.

In today’s post, I explain how to get and setup Python.

Getting Started with Python
============================

Python is an easy to learn and powerful programming language with elegant syntax and dynamic typing and it is available freely for all major operating systems. This is great news because no one is left out here.

The first thing you need to do is to install the Python interpreter in your system, this is the program that reads Python programs and carries out their instructions. This has to be installed before you can do any programming in Python.

If you have Linux or Mac OSX installed in your computer, happy days for you already have the python interpreter is included with your operating system. If you’re a Windows user, you can visit www.python.org/download/ and download a package installer that will install python interpreter for you.

Linux/Mac users: To check if python is installed load the terminal and type python and hit enter. If all is well, you should see a message like this:

Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug 1 2012, 05:16:07)
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>>

That is a sign that the interpreter is ready to receive python commands.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed python. The next post will be about how to write your first python program. Thanks for reading.

1 thought on “Python 101: Getting it”

  1. Pingback: Python 101: Your first python program | @terrameijar

Comments are closed.