Before we get into writing our code, we will have to install a few programs and tools.

We will use REPL.IT as a quick, fast, simple way to get started writing python code. REPL, or Read, Edit, Play, Loop allows us to run python code from our browser. You will need to create an account - but it's free!

After signing up, please visit this link and type in PYTHON to choose the correct python environment.

Sublime Text — code editor — you'll be writing code here. This is a free tool, but they will ask you to donate every few saves. However, you can use the program for free as long as you'd like.

Although wrangling the PyCharm / Anaconda set up described above will allow us to safely and happily write python code locally, it is in some ways severely limiting because we are not able to run long standing processes or communicate with our code from real world inputs.

In order to truly achieve freedom to do anything we want with python, we must configure an environment in the cloud that is accessible via the internet.

Normally, this is an expensive and skills-intensive process. But! The Future is Now fam, and our service based economy affords us the ability to relatively easily set up a python environment for experimenting around in the cloud for free(...mium).

Pls go to Python Anywhere and create a free account. If you find the service useful, feel free to upgrade later. For now, just create the account and verify that you can log in. We will have instructions for transferring some of our projects to the internets later on in the day.

If you are interested, you may choose to download and run python locally. There are several ways to do this, an easy way is to follow the steps delineated in the next section.