Dushyant Chaudhari

Setting up Python

2 min read

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Written by Tim Peters. Can be retrieved using import this, which gives:

  • Beautiful is better than ugly.
  • Explicit is better than implicit.
  • Simple is better than complex.
  • Complex is better than complicated.
  • Flat is better than nested.
  • Sparse is better than dense.
  • Readability counts.
  • Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
  • Although practicality beats purity.
  • Errors should never pass silently.
  • Unless explicitly silenced.
  • In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
  • There should be one— and preferably only one —obvious way to do it.
  • Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
  • Now is better than never.
  • Although never is often better than right now.
  • If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
  • If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
  • Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!

Python setup

Python is packaged by many organizations. Most of them are open-source and here are some ways to setup python

  • Anaconda
    • Download Anaconda package manager directly from Anaconda
    • Advantage:
      • Easy to install,
      • GUI setup for installation,
      • Can use packages only available on conda distribution
    • Disadvantage:
      • Heavy,
      • Installs unnecessary packages that you would never know of or use
      • Virtual environments can be hard to couple with other programming needs
  • Miniconda
    • My favorite if I need packages distributed on conda.
    • Highly recommend this over Anaconda distribution for beginners
    • A lighter version of conda, that can be installed from terminal/PowerShell. Follow Anaconda’s miniconda installation guide to the point.
    • Advantage:
      • Easy to install,
      • GUI setup for installation,
      • Can use packages only available on conda distribution
    • Disadvantage:
      • Requires a little bit of experience regarding what to install and how. For example, you will need to install Jupyter separately
      • Virtual environments can be hard to couple with other programming needs
  • Python install
    • Install python from python.org
    • Use pyenv for virtual environment creation
    • Advantage with this approach is that you can clearly manage virtual environment with much ease than conda distributions
    • Disadvantage with this approach is that you need to setup entire environments manually. This gets easier once you know what you want.

Graph View