Getting started

Python is a general purpose programming language that is used for web apps, games, data analysis and so much more. This tutorial is aimed at complete beginners, or people with very little experience coding, however even if you do have some experience you may still use this as a reference. Python has an emphasis on simplicity, known as the zen of python, which you will see as you complete this course.

Setting up

You’ll need to install python onto your system, please head to the official website and download the latest version. If you’re on linux python might already be installed.

Next you need something to read, write and run code, this is called an IDE and/or code editor. Visual Studio Code is one of the most popular code editors and that’s what we’ll use, you should go download it and run the setup.

First steps

Open VS Code and create a new file named main.py. Write print("Hello world") and save the file. Open the terminal, found in the title bar, and run the file by typing the following into the terminal.

# Windows
py main.py
# Linux / Mac OS
python3 main.py