I'm trying to learn Python this year (2018). The reasons are to explore its uses in data science, which is a skill that's becoming increasingly important since last 4-5 years.
A disclaimer first - I'm not a programmer by profession and have taken some programming courses in college. But as saying goes these days - everybody's a programmer, either by choice or just have to pick up the skill. And it's a good skill to have!
That's my motivation for learning Python. One of the first things I realized is that I need some online classes and a local environment to practice. The best resource for the online material is Python classes by Google, which you can access here.
And the best version to learn (at least if you're reading this in 2018) is 2.7.x. If you want to try your hand at later versions, you can go ahead. You can download it here.
Once you've installed it on Windows (I don't have a mac!) you would want to execute Python code from Window's command line. Here I had to do some digging so I'm sharing what I did.
So Step 1 - install the Python version.
Step 2 - Change the environment variable to execute Python code on the command line in Windows.
These steps are for Windows 10 Home.
Right-click on 'This PC' and select Properties. It should open a new window for 'System'. Select 'Advanced system settings'. Then click on 'Environment Variables' shown in the first screenshot. And then change the 'Path' environment variable under user variables for your user and add the three entries as below.
This should help you run Python from Windows command line. And the best way to check if everything is working; by going to the command prompt ('cmd') and type Python, you should see something as below:
If you encounter any issues, I think the best way is to Google or use StackOverflow. But these steps helped a complete amateur like me to get started. Enjoy!
A disclaimer first - I'm not a programmer by profession and have taken some programming courses in college. But as saying goes these days - everybody's a programmer, either by choice or just have to pick up the skill. And it's a good skill to have!
That's my motivation for learning Python. One of the first things I realized is that I need some online classes and a local environment to practice. The best resource for the online material is Python classes by Google, which you can access here.
And the best version to learn (at least if you're reading this in 2018) is 2.7.x. If you want to try your hand at later versions, you can go ahead. You can download it here.
Once you've installed it on Windows (I don't have a mac!) you would want to execute Python code from Window's command line. Here I had to do some digging so I'm sharing what I did.
So Step 1 - install the Python version.
Step 2 - Change the environment variable to execute Python code on the command line in Windows.
These steps are for Windows 10 Home.
Right-click on 'This PC' and select Properties. It should open a new window for 'System'. Select 'Advanced system settings'. Then click on 'Environment Variables' shown in the first screenshot. And then change the 'Path' environment variable under user variables for your user and add the three entries as below.
If you encounter any issues, I think the best way is to Google or use StackOverflow. But these steps helped a complete amateur like me to get started. Enjoy!
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