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Setup

Install Python​

Python Site

Downloads

Python Beginners Guide/Download

Windows Setup​

  1. Run the Windows installer.

  2. Add python to the Windows OS PATH environment variable.

There is an option to do this from the installer or you can edit the environment variable manually.

  1. Check the installed version.

You can check that python is available from the command line by running the py command in Windows PowerShell.

Install Anaconda​

Anaconda is a distribution of the Python and R programming languages for scientific computing (data science, machine learning applications, large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, etc.), that aims to simplify package management and deployment.

Create Virtual Environments Using Anaconda​

The virtual environment will be used to isolate packages that a script imports.

List packages for current virtual environment​

conda list

Create a new virtual environment based on info in a YAML file​

The environment.yaml file lists information such as the environment name and specific packages.

environment.yaml

name: some-env-name
channels: 
- defaults
dependencies:
- pandas=1.5.3
- pillow=9.3.0
- python=3.11.3
conda env create -f environment.yaml

List the available environments​

The active environment will have an asterisk (*) and the default environment is named 'base'.

conda env list

Activate the environment​

Note that some-env-name is the environment name specified in the environment.yaml file above.

conda activate some-env-name

Deactivate the active virtual environment​

Deactivate virtual environments once you are done with them.

conda deactivate

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)​

The following software can be used to write and/or execute python scripts.

Visual Studio Code

Spyder (Also comes with Anaconda)

Jupyter

IDLE

IDLE is Python’s Integrated Development and Learning Environment and is included as part of the python Windows installer.

VSCode Extensions​

Here are a few python-related extensions:

Python (ms-python.python)

Jupyter extension pack (ms-toolsai.jupyter)