4 Steps to Start Programming in Python! (2024)

Hi everyone, this post is for those who want to learn Python but have never coded before. It’s also for those who use Colab and want to switch to VSCode!

Lets start!

Step 1: Getting the tools ready!

To start, search for VSCode online and download it for your operating system (OS). We will use Windows in this example. Follow the installation steps.

Then you are gonna fin a page like this one and just click in your, pause for a fancy word, operation system (OS) that currently use. In this case we are gonna use Windows.

Then click continue in the installation process and thats it!

Step 2: Installing Python

Now lets get the famous Python, the currently version is 3.12.4 but we are gonna get the 3.11.8.

Sometimes it’s better to use an older version.

Scroll down a bit until you find Python 3.11.8.

You have to scroll all the way down until you find the files for that specific version.

Then click on the installer.exe and this window will appear.

Step 3: Your first Hello_world!

Now lets check it up in the Vscode, first of all:

• Create a new folder and call it Hello_world.
• Then use right click to open Vscode.

Let’s create a new file in that folder! We can do this in different ways. In this post, I’ll show you the normal way. In future posts, I’ll show you the fancy way.

You just have to right click in the left side to open your files explorer, you will se the folder name as HELLO_WORLD — Notice how the name is in Uppercase and not as you wrote it — then create a new file and that’s it!

Our first file will be named as “first.py” — The extension .py of the file, we are gonna use it if we want to write some python code — after that a pop up will show, one like this.

If not appears, search in the left section for python and install it.

Click in the install and now lets verify our currently version of Python through the terminal. Here is when we start hacking things up.

I’ve always been a fan of hotkeys, so press Ctrl + ñ to open the terminal, or you can do this with your mouse like this.

You should be viewing something like this, write the following commands.

python --version
py --version

You should see the current version of Python like this.

And finally, the moment has come!
Start writing your first sentence of code:

print("Hello world, i dit it!")

Then write in the terminal:

py first.py

Conclusion

This little tutorial will help you get started. Let’s call it lesson 0 for those that are doing this for the first time. One of the best soft skills you will improve is resilience.