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Introduction
I am not a wild life photographer, I don’t even like python. JK. Anyway, let’s begin our tutorials on a programming language called “PYTHON”.
Python was developed by Guido van Rossum at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Netherlands. If you refer to any Python documentation, you may notice an alarming number of references to spam, eggs, and the number 42. These references are from Monty Python, the English comedy troupe that inspired Python’s name. Even though Rossum named python after the group, the official icon of the language has become a cute, little {:) Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. }, green snake (which is good, since it would be pretty hard to fit six British comedians’ faces on a program icon anyway).
Why Python?
There are many high-level languages, and the language you are learning here is Python. Python is one of the easiest languages to learn and use, at the same time being a very powerful language to develop applications with. It is used by many professional programmers. A few of the companies where python is used are Google, The New York Stock Exchange, HP, IBM, Industrial Light Magic, Microsoft, Red Hat, Verizon, Xerox, Yahoo! (maybe because of Google), and even in NASA.
This is one of the reasons that made me learn Python, and I’m still in the beginner stage.
Python overview:
- Python is interpreted language.
- Python is interactive.
- Python is Object-oriented.
- Python is Beginner’s language.
- Creating python programing is so straight forward that programming with the language has been called “Programing at the speed of thought.”
Python is Free and Open source
Python is free, you can install it on your computer without having to shell out anything from your wallet. But python’s licence lets you do much more than that. You can copy or modify python. You can resell python if you want. That’s what open-source is, and also which makes python so popular and successful. Okay now, let’s write our first program in Python.
But before that, you need to install Python on your machine. For that, visit python.org and download it. If you are a Linux user, I think Python is already installed on your system. If not, you can visit the link above and download it. If you are a MAC user, visit this page. Jack Jansen, the guy who runs this page, maintains Python for MAC and has a lot of excellent information on how to install Python under different versions of the Mac OS.
Are you ready to program? Start “Python IDLE”. Wait a minute, what is this ‘IDLE’? I think I forgot to explain this in the last paragraph. But worry not, lets see what it is now.
Python comes with a GUI- Integrated Development Environment called ‘IDLE’ (actually it should be “IDE” right? But why did Rossum call it IDLE? Take this as your homework). A development environment is a set of tools that makes writing programs easier. You can think of it as a word processor for your programs. But it’s even more than a place to write, save, and edit your work. IDLE provides two modes in which you can work: an interactive mode and a script mode.
Finally, it’s time to get your hands dirty with some actual Python programing. The quickest way is to start Python in the interactive mode. In this mode, you can tell Python what to do and it will do it immediately, for you.
Interactive mode
To begin your interactive session, from the Start menu, choose Programs -> Python IDLE (Python GUI). You should see a window very similar to the figure shown below.
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This window is called the Python Shell. At the Command Prompt (>>>), type:
I think you need some rest and want to visit Facebook, that’s no problem. Visit your wall, and I will continue with this in the next tutorial. See you guys in the next part. Have a nice day. But don’t forget to like us on Facebook.