Python for Beginners: Install Python and Write Your First Program

[00:01] to learn how to install and set up Python inside our computer. Now, if Mac, things are going to be slightly different. Fun fact, if you're sitting on a Mac computer, you do actually already have Python installed by default

[00:15] since it is part of the operating system, but it is better to go inside and install your own version since it will be up to date and you have control over which version you're using. So, going inside Python's website just like

[00:28] we're doing here for Windows is still a good idea. So, if you're sitting on Windows or Mac, we're going to go to this website, which is called and install the latest version of Python. There is also a terminal version

[00:42] interested in doing it that way, I will have a step-by-step guide in the that. If you're sitting on Linux, there will also be a step-by-step guide inside of showing you what you need to type inside the terminal step-by-step in

[00:57] order to install and set up Python. So, with that said, if you're sitting on Windows or Mac, you're going to go to python.org, then you're going to go up to downloads, and then you're going to go down to where it says Windows or Mac.

[01:11] So, basically, if you're sitting on Windows, you go to Windows, then you go manager. So, you're going to click that, you're going to scroll down to the and get the installer at the bottom here. Again, it's going to be the same

[01:24] process for Mac. Uh there is a slight difference, though, because once you have downloaded the installer, and I did actually uninstall Python from my system step-by-step with you guys, but if I were to go ahead and open the installer,

[01:37] you can see that we get this little window here. On Mac, it's pretty the software. But, on Windows, we do need to do one extra step. My thing here is in Danish for some reason. I don't think my system

[01:52] is set up for Danish, but apparently it is. So, we're We're to go ahead and say And once we've done that, or at least installed this Python manager, uh it does say something inside the terminal, which is Windows PowerShell

[02:06] that we have open right now. And this is the extra step for Windows users. It path now." Very important you say yes to this, because this is going to make sure that you can actually gain access to Python

[02:19] functions, no matter where you are inside your terminal. So, we're going to inside your terminal. So, we're going to go ahead and say yes, or Y for yes. Then it's going to tell you you do not have the latest Python runtime, so

[02:31] install the latest version of CPython. Then just go ahead and say Y for yes, and install it now. And then it's going to start installing. Uh and once it's done, we can then start verifying which Python

[02:44] version you have, just to kind of check that everything got installed correctly. to ask if you want to view online help. We're just going to say N for no, because we do not need to have that. And now you should have Python installed.

[02:58] So, for Mac users, of course you didn't have to add to path. That is more of a Windows thing. But, what you can now do is you can open up Windows PowerShell, which should look something like this. Just go down to the search bar, click

[03:11] PowerShell, and then it should open up here. There's also the command prompt, terminal. If you're on Linux, it's just called terminal. Basically, you need to So, what we can do now is we can actually go ahead and ask it what Python

[03:26] version we have installed in our system, just to double-check what exactly we're using. So, if I write Python {dash}{dash} version, you can see that I get Python version 3.14.6.

[03:40] So, that is the version we're using right now in this tutorial series here. Of course, if you have a later version, which makes sense, because in 2 years from now, there's of course going to be updates to Python. And just to mention

[03:52] little bit different. Instead of writing Python, you might have to write Python Python, you might have to write Python 3 and then dash dash version. Now, in my case it does the exact same thing. It just kind of tells me what Python Python

[04:06] version I'm using. Uh but just know that on in some cases if Python is not working for you, try Python 3 and then whatever commands. And this is basically it. We have Python installed. Now, we do need to do one other thing just to make

[04:21] is not something that you have to do, but it's just kind of like if you don't bit more difficult and a little bit more tricky writing code inside Visual Studio Code. Uh basically, we need to have a IntelliSense set up for Python. So, if

[04:36] incorrect or if there's some sort of wrong syntax, then I do want my editor to tell me that something is wrong. So, basically, you need to go inside where we have our extensions, which is down

[04:48] here. You're going to search for something called Pylance. Pylance is actually the IntelliSense that we use inside Visual Studio Code. So, you're extension. And then once you've done that, we're actually pretty much ready

[05:03] that, we're actually pretty much ready for writing Python code. So, let's just for fun try and write some sort of Python program. Just a really quick one which is sort of a tradition, you know, you say hello world and then it spits it

[05:15] out. What we're going to do is we're going to go inside our editor and we're say open folder. And you're just going to find some place inside your computer Python application or maybe all your Python projects installed. Just some

[05:30] sort of place where we can save this little Python script that we're writing. want to have it on your desktop. You might want to have it inside your sub folder somewhere. But just go ahead and open up some place. Now, I do have a

[05:44] folder on my computer called Python and inside that folder I have a YouTube folder specifically for YouTube videos. Just going to right-click and say Python _ course. Now, it is sort of a good idea

[05:59] Just kind of write underscores when you're, you know, naming your uh file category system. So, I'm just going to go in and say Python course, go The next thing we're going to do is we're going to go and create a new file.

[06:13] So, I'm going to say new file, and I'm going to call it something like intro.py just to give it some sort of name uh just for our first application here. So, I'm going to say enter. And .py is actually the extension we have for

[06:26] specifically Python files. Now, if you do get a pop-up notification down at the bottom here that says something about adding the default interpreter path, that really quickly cuz that's probably a good idea. Uh so, if you click open

[06:40] settings, and then you can see it opens up this uh default interpreter path window setting, which is basically more of a Windows thing again because we had to set up something on our path on Windows. Uh but basically, this is

[06:52] pointing to the wrong path if you get this notification. So, what you can do is you can open up your terminal again, and then you can write where Python. Actually, we need to type where.exe

[07:05] Python. If you do that, it's going to give you a path. Basically, just go and copy paste this path here since that is where you have your Python installed, here, and then paste that in, and that is going to be your particular

[07:19] uh Python path directory. So, once we do that, you can close it down, and it should now be working, and there should be no path sort of errors. So, what we're going to do inside our Python script here is

[07:32] parentheses, and then we're going to write a message inside using double quotes, and we're going to say hello world. After doing that, we're going to open up our folder where we have our project. So, in my case here, I had it

[07:48] inside Python, YouTube, Python course, and then I have my file here. I'm just going to go ahead and copy the path for this particular folder where I have my project. Going to go back inside PowerShell. Then I'm going to write CD

[08:01] for content directory. And then I'm going to go ahead and paste in the path, click enter, and then you can see now I'm inside the directory for this can actually do a couple of different things. You could, if you don't have VS

[08:15] Code open right now, you could also write code space {dot} or punctuation, which is basically just going to open up this project enter here, you can see it just kind of opens up

[08:27] open. But, that is also a shortcut for opening up this particular project inside VS Code, if you want to know how to do that. But, what you can do is you can basically just type Python space, and

[08:40] then the name of your file. So, in this case, it is intro.py. And of course, we can do this because we're inside the correct directory. So, intro.py, click enter, and then you can see it spits out hello world because we

[08:54] now access this file, and it is now doing what we told it to do. In this case here, this is just a basic console spit out commands. So, we just get it directly inside PowerShell. And you might be asking,

[09:07] how do we go from this? Cuz now we're just making it spit out things inside the console. So, if we were to, you know, copy and paste this down a few times and go back in and just click up on the

[09:19] command, click enter, and then you can see, oh, we get more stuff. But, this isn't really a software, you know? This isn't a application just like VS Code is an application or Photoshop is an application. Now, how do we create

[09:33] applications? And that is something we're going to get to in further lessons. You know, that's a little bit down the road, but we will get there at some point. So, this was basically how we could install Python and set up a

[09:45] run inside your PowerShell inside your terminal just so you can get some sort actually working. Of course, we will get more into detail is pretty much what I wanted to do just to kind of test out if our installation

[10:00] actually worked. So, with that said, I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you guys hope you enjoyed and I'll see you guys next time.