A brief overview of “Python and Anaconda” — for starters
What is Python?
Yes you are right!. Python is a giant snake that is capable of swallowing an alligator. But wait, let’s see what our friend ‘Google’ has to say about ‘Python’. See it for yourself
‘Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose…’, this is what our Google guy says about Python. That’s the popularity of Python programming. It is so popular that it is able to replace the original meaning of Python.
Why such a name for the programming language?
Yes, the guys to the left are one of the reason for the programming language get such a name. The guys in the left are members of British surreal comedy troupe, ‘Monty Python’. In the late 1980’s Guido Van Rossum, developer of Python who was reading the script of Monty Python’s flying circus was in a need of name that was short, unique and bit mysterious, so he called the language he was developing as Python
A generic introduction to Python:
Python is a general purpose, high level programming language, which means you can use it for solving general problems and high level implies that the programming language nearly matches the spoken/written language.
Python programming is easy for a beginner to pick up due to its simple syntax and versatility. For instance, other programming requires semicolons or parentheses to complete a command, whereas python uses just new lines to complete a command.
Python heavily relies on whitespace indentation to fix the scope of loops, functions and classes whereas other programming languages requires curly brackets to define the scope. Find the following two figures, you can find that the C program has more syntax than Python does.
As we have already mentioned Python is versatile, let’s see how versatile it is. Python can be used for web development. Flask, Pyramid, CherryPy and Django are some of the frameworks offered by Python for web development.
Python can be used for game development, for data analysis, for AI and ML and for software development too. In short, Python can be considered as the Swiss army knife of coding.
Also note that, as of 2020 Python 3 version is used widely since the support for Python 2 has been stopped officially. Hence if you start learning Python, make sure you learn Python 3 version and not older versions of Python.
How to install Python(in Windows)?
If you’re planning to install Anaconda, then you may skip this, as Python will get installed when you install Anaconda.
To install Python, simply type “install python” in google search and the first tab will be from python.org as shown in the image below. Click and go to python.org
Once you are into python.org, click on “Download Python 3.8.5” (The version and interface might change at the time of you installing Python)
A .exe file will be prompted, click on “Save File” and execute it once downloaded
Once you have installed type “Python” in the search box provided by Windows as shown below, you must be able to see IDLE, which is an default Integrated Development Environment for python in windows.
Libraries in Python
Library literally means collection of books, right?. Similarly in Python libraries are bunch of codes ready to use in your project. You can use those libraries by using the keyword ‘import’. If you want to have a simplified explanation of what are libraries in Python, read through the small story in this link What are libraries in python?.
Finally to conclude, irrespective of the programming language ranking bodies, you can find Python at top ten languages in 2020 for sure. As we have now seen what is Python, let’s see what is anaconda (another programming language in the name of a snake?).
What is Anaconda?
Well, probably we all would have heard the term anaconda referring to a giant snake capable of swallowing a fully grown human. If you are a 90’s kid then mostly you would have also seen the famous movie Anaconda in your childhood days, reminding you the idea of how big an anaconda is.
Again, let ask the Google fellow what does he knows about an anaconda.
From the above figure you can find our movie being pushed down by something called “Individual Edition — Anaconda”. Now, that’s the popularity of Anaconda. So what is Anaconda in the context of programming?
Anaconda is a free and open source distribution of Python and R (another programming language). Which means, when you install Anaconda, the packages which are very much useful for data science and machine learning for Python comes pre-installed with it, hence Anaconda becomes so convenient for a data scientist and machine learning enthusiasts
Environments in Anaconda:
Anaconda also acts as environment managers. For example, if you are working with image processing project (Project X) and a data analysis project (Project Y) simultaneously, you can create separate environment for each of them.
Why we need separate environment is, let’s say both Project X and Project Y are dependent on library A(module A/package A). And it so happens for Project X the library version has to be 1.0.0, and for Project Y the library version has to 1.1.0. This might cause problems while working on the project, to avoid such troubles we create environment.
Trivia:
For installing libraries in python we use pip install <library name>
For installing libraries in anaconda we use conda install <library name>
How to install Anaconda:
To install Anaconda on Windows, go to www.anaconda.com/downloads. Once you are in the download pages click on download and save the .exe file and execute it later.
For a detailed installation guide, visit https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/install/windows/
Anaconda Navigator:
Once you install Anaconda you get a GUI (Graphical User Interface) called Anaconda Navigator as shown below
You can use this GUI to create environment, launch IDE’s like Jupyter notebook, Jupyter lab and Spyder. The anaconda has it’s own prompt to execute commands.
Conclusion:
Now as you have a brief idea about what Python and Anaconda are in the programming world, install them and get your hands dirty with codes.
Once you installed both Python and Anaconda, get accustomed with the interface and start exploring the interesting features in it. Start using jupyter lab or jupyter notebook from anaconda to start with simple python scripts. It’s always easy to debug in jupyter lab and notebook, since cell execution is possible.
Analogy: If Python is a cake then Anaconda is the place which sells the cake with added flavors, you can choose whether to eat them or not. Also Anaconda provides special tools like fork, knife, spoon (Jupyter notebook, Jupyter Lab, Spyder) etc. to savour that cake. It doesn’t stop there, Anaconda allows yourself to create environment to enjoy that cake, you can create separate environment for different occasion. You can create an environment that matches the taste of you and your girlfriend/boyfriend, an environment to enjoy the cake with family etc..
All the best for your coding endeavor.
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Regards,
Vignesh Kathirkamar
