Python for Absolute Beginners Transcripts
Chapter: Course setup and requirements
Lecture: Setting up an editor
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In addition to Python you're going to need to be able to write code. Now, truthfully, any text editor will let you write code
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but it is very important that you have one that understands Python and understands programming concepts
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because you'll be many, many more times effective and it'll catch all the errors for you. You'll see what we mean throughout this course
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but I'm going to recommend a handful of editors that you could use, all of which are free and it's going to make you really much, much more comfortable
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and it'll catch the errors and help you out as you go. So we're going to have a couple of levels of editing code.
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We're going to start out just by playing with code in this thing called a REPL a Read Eval Print Loop, R-E-P-L. Now, we actually saw that before
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when I was just trying to check if I had Python. I typed Python3 without any extra stuff and I got something that looked kind of like this.
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This is an interactive way where you can explore little bits of Python code. You can see I said X is 10, Y is 98, Z is 24
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and I multiplied them all together and got some kind of answer out. This is not how we write normal computer code. You can't save this.
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You can't easily get this back. So if you're going to write a real program you should save it to a file and then you feed that file to Python.
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But in the very early stages of this course when we're just playing with simple, simple ideas
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we're just going to open this up and see what's happening. Okay, so this is level one. We're going to do this just for like a chapter or so
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and then I'm going to move on to writing real programs. For that level, I'm going to be using something called PyCharm.
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You already saw a screen shot of that. Now, it says the Python IDE Integrated Development Environment for professional developers, and that is true.
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Many professional developers use PyCharm. It's extremely powerful and useful but it's also one of the most helpful editors for beginners as well.
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The reason is it gives you all this help. You're going, "I want to use this library," and you start to type it
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and it'll show you all the things you can do with it. It'll give you automatic help. It'll check for errors before you even run them
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and run into those problems, all kinds of great stuff. So we're going to be using PyCharm. There's a paid version, the Professional version
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and there's a free Community Edition. We are going to be using the Community Edition. If you have the Professional one, that's fine.
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It's no harm with that, but you don't need to get it. That one costs money. The free Community Edition, as you can imagine, is free
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so we're going to be using that one and it's totally capable for what we need for this course. The best way to get it is to install this thing
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called the JetBrains Toolbox. So you can go download it. I think you might have to log in.
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I'm not entirely sure if you got to create an account or not. But notice how it has PyCharm Professional in this list
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and then those are the installed ones. If you scroll down farther, it says, "Available." Just scroll down until you see PyCharm Community.
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Click that, and wait one minute and you'll have PyCharm. What's nice about this is it always keeps it up to date
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and it gives you access to the other tools as well that you might need. So it'll say, "Hey, there's an update for your PyCharm
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"You want to click here and get it?" Yes. I do. This is nice. Make sure you install it and get going.
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If, for some reason, you don't want to use PyCharm like I said, really nice, you'll see it super good. I think it's the best editor for beginners.
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If you don't want to use it for some reason the other good choice these days is something called Visual Studio Code. This is free. It is open source.
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It is available on all the different platforms even though it's from Microsoft. So you come over here. You can see it, and it's a little under
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and the important thing is once you install it you also need to make sure you install the Python extension.
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This thing has been downloaded 54 million times. It's the most popular thing on Visual Studio Code but if you don't install it
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it's not going to understand Python and it's not going to work right. Click this little box here. It opens up this dialogue
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and it should have Python right at the top. It seems like it's much more popular than all the others. So click that, wait a few moments
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and you'll have your Visual Studio Code ready to work on Python. Finally, there's one third option that you can consider.
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I would recommend, really, PyCharm and then Visual Studio Code and then this, but there's a lot of folks especially coming from the data science world
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that like to work in something called JupyterLab or Jupyter Notebooks and you're welcome to use this, as well as the way to work with the course.
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There's a few little situations where it won't quite work but for the most part, it'll be okay. I'm not going to recommend this or use this
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but I will, at the very end of the course put an appendix if you want to install this. It takes a few steps on configuring your system
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to make it work, and then you have this editor as well which is a interesting environment. So you can use this for most of what you're doing
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and check the appendix on how to get going with that.