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Installing and Getting Started with Python
Setting up Python on my own computer.
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:
$ python get-pip.py
so In order to install globally you may to run a “sudo” install:
$ sudo python get-pip.py
Installing Python Modules
$ sudo pip install requests
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
for i in range(100):
time.sleep(1)
sys.stdout.write("\r%d%%" % i)
sys.stdout.flush()
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
Posted in General Programming with Python