Downloading and Installing Python

First download Python from the Python website. After installing, you can install other helpful tools including Pip. Save the file as a Python file (extension: ".py") and navigate to the file in your terminal. Run the Python script using your terminal to install:

1$ python get-pip.py
2

In order to install globally you may to run a "sudo" install:

1$ sudo python get-pip.py
2

Installing Python Modules

1$ sudo pip install requests
2

The entire Python setup was surprisingly easy. I had never programmed in Python before and only knew that it was good for backend scripts. I really wanted to expand my coding knowledge so I decided to take up Python. Here are some useful "projects" that got me going:

• Web Scraping
• Simple math formulas
• Using cool modules
• Calling API's like iTunes and YouTube
• Encoding and decoding JSON data
• Downloading files and making a progress bar

Dynamic Progress Bar

This project helped me gain a better understanding of how Python can communicate with the user via the Terminal interface. Reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3173320/text-progress-bar-in-the-console

1for i in range(100):
2    time.sleep(1)
3    sys.stdout.write("\r%d%%" % i)
4    sys.stdout.flush()
5

Constructing and Interpreting JSON data

This was great way for me to learn how Python data structures worked. It helped me gain a good foundation in simple variable types as well as how to communicate between different programming languages. For example, Javascript often sends data in the form of a JSON object. By doing this project I was able to pass data from my Javascript into my Python script and vice versa. Reference