Setting up the environment

- [Narrator] I'm going to assume that you already have Python version 3 installed on your local computer. To check this, start up the terminal window and type up the command Python3 dash dash version. And you can see that I'm using Python 3.7.2. On Windows, you might just need to type Python dash dash version without the 3 depending on your installation. So for this course make sure that your version is as least Python 3.6. If it isn't, you can visit the Python.org site to update the version for your OS. If you haven't already installed Python on your computer or if running that command results in an error, then you'll need to install Python. You can do that by visiting the Python.org website and then going to the downloads area where you can find installers for all of the popular operating systems. Installing VS code itself is really easy. There are installers available for MAC, Windows and various flavors of Linux. You can also build VS code directly from source but that's beyond the scope of this course. Visit the downloads page of VS code if you need to install it and then choose the right method for your platform. Once you have installed, open the program and once you have VS code open, click on this icon to get to the extensions view. Then type the word Python into this search box and you'll see a list of matching extensions. The one that we're looking for is the official Python extension from Microsoft and you can see that it's this one here. It's the one with all the millions of downloads. Install the extension by clicking on the install button. Now I've already got it installed so my button says uninstall but this will be a green install button for you if you don't already have it. You might also need to select a Python interpreter for VS code to use. So to make sure that you've got one selected, in the view menu you can either choose the Command Palette entry or type command shift p or control shift p on Windows and then type Python select and you'll see this little command right here called Python Select Interpreter. So I'll select that command and depending on how many installations of Python you have, this little list should pop up. I'm going to choose the one with the highest version number and that's this one here. Python 3.72 64-bit. If you want to use the exercise files that go along with the course, download them and put them somewhere on your computer that's easy to access. I've put the exercise files here on my desktop but you can put yours anywhere you want on your machine. Okay, so that's all we need to do for the moment. Once you've selected an interpreter and you have the exercise files where you want them and you've got Python installed and working, you are ready to proceed with the course and we will add other settings and configurations throughout the course as we need them.