From the course: Programming Foundations: Beyond the Fundamentals

Configuring your environment - Python Tutorial

From the course: Programming Foundations: Beyond the Fundamentals

Configuring your environment

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- I'll be using a Mac in this course, but you can also work through it using Windows or Linux. I'll also be coding in Python. To use Python on a Windows machine or on a Mac, you have to install it. If you don't already have it installed, start by opening a web browser and going to python.org/download. I'm using Python Version 3 in this course, so you can download the latest version that starts with 3. I'll be using Python 3.8.0, which was the current version while I recorded this course, but you may see a different version number. As long as it starts with 3, you should be fine. Once you've downloaded Python, just open the installer you downloaded and follow the prompts to install it. You can use any code editor to work through this course. I'll be using Visual Studio Code, so if you want your screen to match mine, you'll want to install and use that, as well. Visual Studio Code is free to download and use, and it's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. One of the first things I do when I install Visual Studio Code is to turn on Word Wrap. That ensures that a line of code that's longer than the editor window will wrap to the next line, so I can see it all, rather than it getting cut off at the edge of the window. To turn on Word Wrap, you can click the View menu, and then click Toggle Word Wrap. You'll also want to add an extension to Visual Studio Code to make it easier to work with Python code in the editor. On the activity bar on the left side of the window, click the Extensions button. Then in the search box, type Python. In the results, look for the Python extension that's written by Microsoft, which is right here. Clicking that gives you a little more information on the extension, and when you're ready, click the green Install button to install it. When you're done, the editor may prompt you to restart it to enable the extension, and you'll be prompted to install a couple other tools as well, which you should go ahead and do. After the extension is installed in Visual Studio Code, it should prompt you to install Pylint, which is another really useful tool. You should click Install to make sure this tool gets installed. Now, the first time I installed the Python extension, I closed out of the Pylint dialogue box too early, gah! If you did that too, if you already dismissed that dialogue and you still need to enable Pylint, check out the Visual Studio Code documentation for instructions on how to enable that. You may also be prompted to install Python command line tools by your operating system. If your system suggests this, follow those prompts to install those tools. If any of this sounds confusing or unfamiliar, check out Programming Foundations: Fundamentals, which walks you step by step through this process. Now that you have everything installed and configured, you're good to go. Let's dig in.

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