104.1.1.Introduction to Python and IDE for Python

What is python

• It is a language
• Human-readable syntax and well Documented
• Open Source (Free)
• Powerful scripting language with simple Syntax
• www.python.org
• Used by many data scientists and developers

History

• Python language created by Guido van Rossum (Benevolent Dictator for Life).
• First Python version released in 1991
• Python 2 released in 2000
• Python 3 released in 2008
• Python 3 introduced to overcome future code expanding
• Python 3 is NOT fully backward compatible with Python 2
• Python 2 is frozen and supported until 2020. Good features from Python 3 are back-ported.

Which one to use? Python 2 or Python 3

• Python 2 is NOT same as Python 3. There are minor changes.
• There are some incompatibilities, the code in Python 2 may not always run in Python 3 and vice-versa.
• All important packages like NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib are available for both Python 2 and Python 3
• We are using Python 3 in our courses.

Installing Python & Python IDEs

• Python has many options to write and execute a program.
• You can use Text Editors or Command line interfaces or Notebook or an IDE.
• We will use Spyder IDE in our courses.
• Anaconda distribution has all the required software’s inbuilt. We just need to download and install it.

Installing Python, Anaconda

• Download and install Anaconda3 by visiting anaconda.org.
• It automatically installs
  • Ipython
  • Jupyter notebook
  • Spyder IDE
• Spyder is what we need for our coding.

Spyder- Python IDEs

• Spyder (formerly Pydee) is an open source cross-platform IDE for the Python language.
• Editor with syntax highlighting and code completion.
• Has an interactive console to execute and check the output of the code.
• Testing and debugging is relatively easy.
• Best IDE if you are coming from an R-Studio or MATLAB background.
• Spyder also provides an object inspector that executes in the context of the console. Any objects created in the console can be examined in the inspector.