Programming with Python: Setup

Overview

This lesson is designed to be run on a personal computer. All of the software and data used in this lesson are freely available online, and instructions on how to obtain them are provided below.

Install Python

In this lesson, we will be using Python 3 with some of its most popular scientific libraries. Make sure you install Python following the instructions on the course website.

Obtain lesson materials

  1. Download exercises.zip
  2. Move downloaded files to ~/course/.
  3. Unzip the files.

You should see two folders called data and code in the newly created exercises directory in your directory.

Launch Python interface

To start working with Python, we need to launch a program that will interpret and execute our Python commands. Below we list several options. If you don’t have a preference, proceed with the top option in the list that is available on your machine. Otherwise, you may use any interface you like.

Option A: Jupyter Notebook

A Jupyter Notebook provides a browser-based interface for working with Python.

Command line (Terminal)

1. Navigate to the data directory:

Unix shell

If you’re using a Unix shell application, such as Terminal app in macOS, Console or Terminal in Linux, or WSL on Windows, execute the following command:

cd ~/course/exercises/data

2. Start Jupyter server

Unix shell

jupyter lab

3. Launch the notebook by clicking on the “New” button on the right and selecting “Python 3” from the drop-down menu: Anaconda Navigator Notebook directory

Option B: Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (or VS Code) is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) that also supports writing Python code and running Jupyter Notebooks.

Command line (Terminal)

1. Navigate to the data directory:

Unix shell

If you’re using a Unix shell application, such as Terminal app in macOS, Console or Terminal in Linux, or WSL on Windows, execute the following command:

cd ~/course/exercises/data

2. Start VS Code

Unix shell

code .