General setup

Let's look at the process of obtaining a Python distribution for your system and an appropriate development environment:

• Any developer can obtain their own Python distribution from https://www.python.org/downloads/.
• Even though both Python 2 and Python 3 are being supported and maintained, throughout this book we will be using Python 3.
• The choice of an integrated development environment (IDE) is flexible for this book. Although it is technically possible to develop Python applications using a minimal text editor, such as Notepad or TextEdit, it is usually much easier to read and write code with IDEs designed specifically for Python. These include IDLE (https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html), PyCharm (https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/), Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/), and Atom (https://atom.io/).