Welcome to the python world, the first question that someone who wants to start with python can ask is « which version of python should I install » so we will start by giving a large idea about the different versions of python that we can find actually.

It is important to know that some operating systems, like Linux and Mac OS X for example, include a default install. But it is possible that the version installed by default does not correspond to the one that you want to use.

Windows does not include a default version of python. And of course, it is possible to install a version of python manually on Windows.

Programs developed in Windows can easily be used in another operating system, and vise versa.

these information are extracted from the official web site of python organisation ().

The list of the standard releases is given in the figure above. It is very important to consider needs carefully before using a version other than the current production version. The current production versions are 3.4.0 and 2.7.6.

 

Which IDE to choose

 

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is an application that allow to code easily, 

Here are some basic characteristics that a good IDE should have:

• a graphical interface,

• a system that can automatically detect keywords and color them

• a debugger to fix the program if necessary

• and of course, it allows to save and open the script exactly like when it was left.

There are several IDE that can be used with python, personally, I have used for a long time python x,y. This distribution is free and allow to develop easily scientific and engineering computations, data analysis and data visualization based on Python programming language, Qt graphical user interfaces and Spyder interactive scientific development environment.

But unfortunately this distribution of python was not be released to the latest version of python.

Anaconda

Actually, I use Anaconda, it is a very easy solution to start with python. It is an integrated development environment that is compatible with several platform, a python interpreter is integrated with several functionalities. especially spyder which is a popular code editor with a lot of features like syntax highlighting, code completion, refactoring, etc.