 Here we are at part 4 of end-to-end machine learning course 112 Getting ready to learn Python Windows Edition Now's where things start getting real. This is where we touch Python for the first time We have to make sure it's installed on your machine before you can do anything else The easiest way to do this is to open up a command prompt and that the command prompt type Python If you don't already have Python on your machine Windows 10 automatically takes you to the Microsoft store Where you can download a Windows installation of Python This is okay, but it's not my favorite. There are some subtle limitations to this and also seems unnecessarily complex to me But if you do see this Microsoft store window pop up, you'll know that you don't have it yet and you need to install it instead Open up a browser window and Go to python.org There's a link down in the notes below once you're at python.org go to the downloads option and Scroll down to Windows Click on that now we get a set of options of Python releases for Windows This is where it can get a little bit confusing. There's a lot of options. It's easy to get snowed under The biggest thing to keep in mind is that there are two major pythons Python 2 and Python 3 You want Python 3? Python 2 is a great tool, but it is being retired. It is already no longer actively being updated Python 3 is The future although I put the future in quotes has been active for quite some time now And it has some cool new features that make it easier more consistent clearer to use than Python 2 So you definitely want Python 3 So the next decision you have to make is which version of Python 3 you want There's from 3.1 3.2 all the way up to 3.9 is the very latest and greatest 3.9 is probably fine for almost everyone. However, I actually prefer to step back one I use Python 3.8 for now Sometimes with the very newest versions of Python There are some incompatibilities with other parts of other Python libraries that can cause me trouble when I'm working and so I like to hold off until the very latest is not so new and Python libraries have had a chance to catch up and port their material to it So we're actually going to install Python 3.8 here But the process is almost identical to installing Python 3.9 The next trick is to choose among all of these options for which way you want to install It is most likely if you have a fairly recent fairly capable laptop that you want something that says x8664 that means it's a 64-bit processor It's possible that you have a 32-bit processor, especially if your laptop is older But if you have a 64-bit then I recommend getting the executable installer This downloads a program which you can run and it will install Python on your machine If you do have a 32-bit machine you can come down and click on this other x86 executable installer The way you'll know is if you try to install the 64-bit executable installer and it doesn't work So we'll click on this x8664 executable installer and On this machine it brings up a window that confirms that you actually want to download it It begins the download And then we can go to our downloads folder and sure enough we can see it right there Our Python dash 3.8.6 dash amd64.exe You can see that it's 26.7 megabytes. So decent size although that's not considered to be enormous It's modest for something like Python Double-clicking this .exe installer the executable installer pulls up a window There are some options to check out you want to make sure to add Python to path This will let us use it from the command line smoothly Path is just the list of directories that windows looks through when it's trying to find a program that you've told it to run We have the option to customize installation Here you can see by default. It includes all the documentation. That's good. It includes pip. That's excellent We'll talk about that in a later video. It includes TclTK and idle those are great the Python test suite fine Pi launcher also fine. We're not going to make use of it, but it doesn't hurt anything We can go back then and click install now Our handy progress bar shows us everything being unzipped and installed and files copied and programs being run But we don't have to do a thing let's sit back and watch it Then we get a great notice that setup was successful and we can close it now We have installed Python 3 on our machine Our next step is to test it and make sure that it worked. Okay So we can go back to our command prompt and type Python again But when we do we get sent back to the Microsoft Store now what happened here is our Python installer Went and changed our path It changed the list of directories that windows looks in to try to find Python But this particular little program this little command prompt still has the old path So in order to really test it. We need to close this command prompt window down and opened up a new one In our fresh window we type Python hit enter Oh When we see this we know we've won It's running now a Python interpreter. It shows we're working with Python version 3.8 Which is perfect. That's what we just installed and It gives us this little three arrows this little chevron command prompt that's specific This says hey, I'm waiting for something now Not for our normal command prompt to to run but for our Python interpreter to run Python itself is just another program That looks for Instructions written in a particular code a particular a particular language Called Python. So now we can type things that are specific to Python and it will do those things Make the font just a little bit bigger here so we can see what's going on a little better and do a Preliminary kick of the tires just to make sure everything's working print parentheses quote Hi Quote parentheses This tells Python print What's in the parentheses? which is a string a collection of characters in the quotes Hi hi And then we hit enter the Python interpreter takes this little set of commands It does what it says and sure enough. It says great. I will print this word hi I will print the H and print the I there you go I'm done. What's the next thing you want me to do if you need to get out of this? The secret word is quit with the open and a close parentheses and that closes the Python interpreter So Python's running it's working. This is great. We're getting very very close Now stick around for the next video where we actually write and run our very first program