Beginner’s Guide: How to Install Python and Start Your First Projects

If you have read over our article about how great the Python language is for DIYers and want to learn Python but aren’t sure how to get started, keep reading while we explain how to get it and give you some things to try out once you get it installed.

How Do I Get Python?

Python is free and easy to get by visiting Python.org and downloading the version for your operating system. It’s also where you will want to look over all of the available documentation and guides, as everything you need to know is right there. Another great resource is the Python Beginners Guide, which will walk you through installing Python and much more.

Easy Things To Try With Python Installed

Print a Message In Python

One of the first things most people do with any programming language is print Hello World to the screen. You can do that easily in Python with a single line of code:

print("Hello, World!")

Simple Arithmetic

Simple arithmetic is also very easy to do in Python and only requires one line for the equation and one to print the answer. This next example also shows you how easy it is to create a variable, which is what “result” is:

result = 5 + 3

print(result)

Get User Input In Python

This next example shows you how to ask a user a question while they are using a Python program:

name = input("What is your name? ")
print("Hello, " + name + "!")

List Operations In Python

If you need to create ToDo lists, shopping lists, or any list, Python has you covered with easy-to-understand commands like the following:

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list)

print("Length of list:", len(my_list))

print("First element:", my_list[0])

Simple Loop In Python

Another coming thing when programming is loops that do something over and over again until a specific result occurs, and these are easy to implement in Python. The following code is all you need to print out a list of five entries:

for i in range(5):

print("Iteration:", i)

Read A File In Python

Reading data from a saved file is incredibly easy with Python, making it easy to import information right from the beginning:

with open('example.txt', 'r') as file:

content = file.read()

print(content)

Write to a File In Python

Writing to a file is just as easy as reading from one, so saving information won’t be a problem:

with open('example.txt', 'w') as file:

file.write("Hello, World!")

Let OpenAI Help You

OpenAI is quite good at writing Python code, and it can be a huge benefit to new and experienced programmers, helping with everything from writing the code to debugging it. You can even create a GPT with special rules or insights for your projects.

Keep following Geeksided to learn more about Python and DIY tech projects, and check out these other articles: