Description
A video which shows How To Download and Install Python 3.8 on Windows 10 or Windows 7. This is a Python Windows tutorial for beginners. This is an easy installation, but important information is provided to help choose the installation options. After we install Python 3.x.x, we want to confirm our installation by running a basic hello world script from the command-line interactive shell and from IDLE the Python IDE. Considerations for multiple Python installations are also offered.
Transcript
Welcome to the Grok Shop. In this video I’ll be going over the download installation and basic configuration of the latest Python released for Windows which is 3.8.0 as of this video.
How Many Bits??
This particular machine is 64-bit and that’ll be true for most people but in case you’re not sure, this is how you can check: type [Win]+[s] and “system”, go to “System Information”, and in here you’ll see system type. If it says x64, you’re 64-bit. if it says x86, you’re 32-bit.
Download
OK now we can fire up our favorite browser and type in “python.org”. OK next just hover over the “Downloads” area. By looking at your browser user agents, it’ll detect that you’re on Windows and you should see “Download for Windows”. Don’t hit the button there unless you have a 32-bit system; that will download the 32-bit exe. Instead, go to the link at the bottom that says “view the full list of downloads”. OK now scroll down to “Looking for a specific release?” and you can click “python 3.8.0” or the “Download” link next to it; same thing. OK next if you’re on a 64-bit system you’re gonna click “Windows x86-64 executable installer” and if you’re on a 32-bit system you’re gonna click “Windows x86 executable installer”.
Installation Options
Once it’s done downloading, just click the file and run it. OK now unless you have multiple Python installations and you need another version as your primary Python, you’re gonna want to check the box at the bottom that says “add Python 3.8 to path.” Next click “Customize Installation”. So now here’s your chance to uncheck any features you don’t want. For example: documentation – a lot of people get their documentation online so you could save some space by unchecking that. The package manager pip which is a recursive acronym for “pip installs packages”. You really need to have that; don’t un-check that. If you’re interested in running tickle or TK GUI stuff or using the built-in Python IDLE IDE, then you want to check this box. If you think you might need some testing, install the test suite. The py launcher basically allows you to double click a Python script in Windows and run it directly. If you have multiple versions of Python installed, the py launcher will check the shebang line nowadays just like it does in Linux. In any case, when you’re done, click Next. Check “Install for all users” unless you have a special reason not to. If you want to use the py launcher, you can check this next box. If you prefer to open Python files in a particular editor, for example, you would not want to check this. You can easily change this association later too. And we have a checkbox for the desktop shortcuts if you want those. OK “Add python to environment variables”: this basically adds the PYTHONPATH to your environment variables so python can find your scripts easily. “Pre-compile standard library” basically means it will pre- compile the entire standard library up front for you. Maybe you don’t need all that, so you can let it compile as it goes. I like to do it all up front and get it out of the way. You only need to check these last two options if you want to build and debug Python itself. OK now we can go ahead and click “Install”. If you get a UAC prompt like this, of course just click “yes”.
Path Length Limit
When the installation completes, you’ll probably see a prompt like this to disable your path length limit. What this is is just a registry setting that recently became available in Windows 10. It does allow for a longer path which can be helpful in Python, but it’s not necessarily needed and it could be risky for other applications. So be sure to be careful if you enable it; you can always turn it back off in the registry though. If you choose to let it make that registry change, you’ll have to confirm the UAC. And that’s it you’re done with the install.
Hello World!
OK next, it’s always good to test your install out. If you type [Win]+[S] and “cmd” (go to a command prompt) and type “Python -V” and here we could see Python 3.8.0 was installed. Now we can just type “python” and open up a shell. Now we could try out one of the Python “Easter Eggs”. If we type “import __hello__”, we should get “Hello World!” and we do. Or, if you prefer the old-fashioned way with the print command, we could do that too. And of course we could do the same test with IDLE – the built-in Python IDE. So that’s it for this video. I hope you found it helpful. If you did, be sure to thumbs me up, share me and/or throw me a comment. I will be producing more Python videos, so be sure to subscribe if you want to be in the loop there. But as far as the installation and basic configuration of Python 3.8.0 on Windows, that’s how it’s done. Thanks for watching,