Welcome to “hello, world” of Coding!
Before you attend the course, please have a read of the steps below and have a go at installing Python and some tools that you will need for the whole course.
Text Editor- Download and Installation
For both Windows and Mac we suggest downloading:
Atom: https://atom.io/
Find the file that you downloaded and double-click on it – this should then install atom.
Python- Download and Installation
For all computers, please go to this page: https://www.python.org/downloads/.
Please download and install the latest version of Python.
If you are using Windows, we would strongly suggest downloading powershell, though this may not be available for older versions of Windows. Please have a quick look, and if it is, then please download it. See here for instructions: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/setup/installing-windows-powershell
Open a command-line window (see below if you don’t know what this means) and type: python, and hit enter.
If you see an answer that looks like this:
Python 3.8.0 (tags/v3.8.0:fa919fd, Oct 14 2019, 19:21:23) [MSC v.1916 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
Then we are good to go! (note – details will vary depending on the machine you are using, etc.)
If you don’t see this, please let us know at sj2315@ic.ac.uk or ap3316@ic.ac.uk
Command Line
The command-line is the way we can talk to the ‘real’ computer. On MacOS, you can find it using spotlight search (Command + Space bar) and searching for ‘Terminal’.
If you click on the terminal icon, a terminal will open, and that is where you type python.
On Windows, go to the system icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, and in the search box type cmd. This should then let you find the command prompt, which once you open it, is where you type python.