General information about Python

To develop Python programs you need to be able to edit Python programs and to be able to execute Python programs.

Editing can in principle be done using any basic text editor like Notepad on Windows, but in practice one would like a more advanced editor that automatically formats and highlights your program, and gives more advanced editing. Examples are IDLE and Spyder, which automatically will be installed depending on if you install CPython from python.org or Anaconda (see more details in the menu under “Windows 10” installation).

For discussions of alternative IDEs for Python code development try a Google search for “best python ides”.

To execute a Python program you need an interpreter. The reference implementation and most widely used implementation is CPython which can be installed from python.org/downloads or www.anaconda.com/download. But other implementations exist, e.g. PyPy (see more details on how to install PyPy under “Windows 10” installation). An overview of alternative Python interpreters can be found on www.python.org/download/alternatives.