Getting Started With Python – Part 1

Are you searching for a programming language where you can develop an application that can be deployed on PCs, Macs, mobile phones, the Web, on big servers and small clients and allows you to build GUIs quickly and painlessly? Then, Python is the one-stop solution for all your requirements.

Python is a powerful multi-paradigm computer programming language. With Python, we can do many things. Below are some of the things that can be achieved using Python.

Python Applications

Systems Programming:

Python’s built-in interfaces to operating-system services make it ideal for writing portable,maintainable system-administration tools and utilities (sometimes called shell tools). Python programs can search files and directory trees, etc.

GUIs:

Python’s simplicity and rapid turnaround makes it a good match for graphical user interface programming on the desktop. Python comes with a standard object-oriented interface to the Tk GUI API called tkinter (Tkinter in 2.X) that allows Python programs to implement portable GUIs with a native look and feel.

Internet Scripting:

Python comes with standard Internet modules that allow Python programs to perform a wide variety of networking tasks in client and server modes.

Database Programming:

For traditional database demands, there are Python interfaces to all commonly used relational database systems like Sybase, Oracle, Informix, ODBC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and more.

Rapid Prototyping:

To Python programmers the components written in Python and C look the same. Because of this, it’s possible to prototype systems in Python initially, and then move selected components to a compiled language such as C or C++ for delivery.

Numeric and Scientific Programming:

Python is also heavily used in numeric programming, a domain that would not traditionally have been considered to be in the scope of scripting languages, but has grown to become one of Python’s most compelling use cases.

These are just some of the applications. With python we can do lot more things like Game programming and multimedia with pygame, cgkit, pyglet, PySoy, Panda3D, and others Robot control programming with the PyRo toolkit Instrumentation on the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards Where is Python used?

Google makes extensive use of Python in its web search systems. The other use cases are as follows:

• The popular YouTube video sharing service is largely written in Python.
•  The Dropbox storage service codes, both its server and desktop client software, is primarily written in Python.
• The Raspberry Pi single-board computer promotes Python as its educational language.
• The widespread BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing system began its life as a Python program.
• Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, and others use Python in their production of animated movies.
• Google’s App Engine web development framework uses Python as an application language.

This list includes many more use cases but only few of them have been mentioned.

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A Commonly Asked Question: Is Python a Scripting Language?

Python is a general-purpose programming language that is often applied in scripting roles. It is commonly defined as an object-oriented scripting language, a definition that blends support for OOP with an overall orientation toward scripting roles.

A scripting language or script language is a programming language that supports scripts,programs written for a special run-time environment that can interpret (rather than compile) and automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Python comes under in this category. So it is called a scripting language.

Still, the term ‘scripting’ seems to have stuck to Python like glue. This may be because,people often use the word ‘script’ instead of ‘program’ to describe a Python code file.

Now that we know what Python is and what it can do, let’s get some hands on experience of installing.

Steps to Install Python 3.5 on Windows 64-bit

Now, let’s look at the steps to install Python 3.5 on windows 64-bit. I will go for Miniconda distribution of python since it is easy install all other python packages.

Step 1: Download python from below link.

http://conda.pydata.org/miniconda.html

Step 2: Double click on downloaded Miniconda3-latest-Windows-x86_64.exe and click next

Step 3: Accept the license Agreement .

Step 4: You can select either ‘Install for all users’ or ‘Install just for me’. Let’s select ‘Install just for me’

Step 5: Choose the location for installation.

Step 6: Select add Anaconda to my path and click on install

Step 6: Click on next and ‘Finish’.

Now, you can run Python from Windows command prompt by simple typing ‘Python’.

We hope this blog helped you in understanding the basics of Python and in setting up the base for further advanced operations.

In next blog we will be discussing data types in Python with lot of practical stuffs.

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