As per Google, “Python is a general purpose, interpreted, high level programming language which supports procedural, functional and object oriented programming.” Now this is a standard definition which, your Professor or HR or any interviewer would expect you to say. So, we will learn it by heart. But what do the heavy terms used in this definition mean? We will discuss them in later posts when they will be used.
Moving on, Python was officially released in the year 1991, although the implementation was done by 1989. Guido Van Rossum created Python, and it’s my personal opinion that why Python became so powerful is because he himself was involved in developing his own work till 2018. That’s why Python evolved continuously with time.
Python is open source software freely available and is platform independent. The official website is python.org. You can easily download the latest version available from here for any platform you work on, be it Linux, Windows or Mac. The latest version available is version 3.8. The most popular version arguably is 2.7, and version 3.7 is taking its place. I’ll be using version 3.7. This is because this version has got some new features which are not available in 3.6 and older versions. Although Python 3.10 is also available but still I’ll suggest to stuck with Python 3.7. For knowledge you can analyse 3.7+ versions. I’ll give some comparison of updates in later posts as well.
Talking about IDEs, there are some famous IDEs available on which you can write python codes. IDEs are basically code editors with GUI interfaces. Some of the well-known names are:
- Pycharm
- Sublime- Text
- Atom
- Jupyter Notebook
- Spyder
- IDLE
I have worked on all these editors. When you install python, IDLE comes with it in Windows. I’ll be working on the Windows 8.1 platform because installation is pretty easy in windows.
Now I am a guy who doesn’t like to exhaust my mind in installing some software. Click on next, next, next and finish. If I have to spend my mind in installing also, then what will be left for coding and making logics?
I have worked on Ubuntu also. There also it’s pretty easy to install using the command line, but the problem starts when you want to use Python 3.7 and Ubuntu by default has version 2.7 showing. Set environment path, bash files, set this and that… it’ tricky. In windows, if such a thing happens, setting a path is very easy.
To avoid these issues, another useful way is to download python via some packages. The most popular package is Anaconda Package. You can go to the official website of Anaconda and there are two options available for download, version 2.7 and version 3+. You can download any version of 3+ from there. But recently, Anaconda has stop supporting the Anaconda package for 32-bit Ubuntu OS. I have got 32-bit OS. So I use Ubuntu Mate. Anaconda is heavy software to install because it comes with a large set of modules and packages pre-installed with it. The alternate is Miniconda. It’s a light version and will be installed quickly. But you have to install packages individually as per your need.
Another important advantage is Anaconda Package also provides you two IDEs, Jupyter Notebook and Spyder.
Jupyter notebook is my favourite IDE and all my work here will be on it. It is the only browser based IDE. It will automatically install with Anaconda Package. When you click on Jupyter, first a DOS window will open like this.
Don’t close it. Wait for some time and then your browser will open and the Jupyter interface will be opened as a local host at port 8888.
Its browser based but you won’t need an active internet connection. Do remember that as long as you are working on Jupyter, don’t close that DOS window. If you have more than one browser on your system, then, sometimes Jupyter will ask you to select the browser in which you want to open it, and sometimes it will open by default in any browser.
Sublime Text is an IDE which is available both freely and with paid version. Pycharm is a popular IDE graded as Industry made.
Nonetheless, whichever version you want you can go through it. Now you can understand why I don’t want to spend my energy installing software in a tough way? Because nowadays it depends on both the OS version and the software version. OK. So, I’ll expect you to take help from web resources in the installation process.
With installation done, now, let’s move on with the basics.
pyofpython 