Question

Can someone pls tell me where to get Python from? Can I download it somewhere, does it cost something? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

It's free, open source software. Get it at python.org . Avoid 3.x for this course :-)

Answer 2

If you own a mac it's already installed.

Answer 3

Thanks, I found it :)

Answer 4

Where exactly is the pre install on Mac located? Is it bundled with IDLE? And what version of Python shipped with Leopard. I halfheartedly looked around before I downloaded 2.5.4...

Answer 5

http://www.python.org/getit/mac/ It should have been bundled with Leopard. Did you try invoking it via terminal before installing 2.5?

Answer 6

As a side note, do you code fine in Python? My IDLE crashed quite often, so I moved to my Ubuntu on VM :-(

Answer 7

I did not try invoking it via terminal. I looked around my directories for a bit, got impatient, and just downloaded 2.5.4. And according to python.org, you need a full reinstall of the python libraries to install IDLE, which IMO makes the coding environment while you're learning way easier.

As for stability, I've had IDLE crash once in ~10 hours spent coding and play around with it. It's not perfect but it's working so far. If it really starts being an issue I'll just use KomodoEdit for writing code and IDLE for running it through the interpreter.

Answer 8

Maybe because I installed it some time ago, it was having some issues with the OS X version, since ever since then, there were at least two software updates from Apple.
Yeah, a GUI helps a lot when you are beginning to code. I coded in PyScripter, it was fun and very constructive :-)