Anaconda is the new recommended environment
23 Sep 2016Even if you have Python working in some fashion on your computers already, I have a new recommendation for installing it. There is a “distribution” of Python (and some other things, including NLTK) called “Anaconda” that makes setting up Python and related software much easier.
I’m going to switch to Anaconda myself, both in and out of class,
rather than using the Python/IDLE combination
directly from Python.org. The Anaconda distribution makes everything pretty
painless, you don’t have to worry about, e.g., not having matplotlib installed, etc.,
and it also contains some other stuff that we’ll use later in the semester (notably R).
And the IDE (Integrated Development Environment, comparable to IDLE) that is included
is smarter and nicer to use. It’s more complicated-looking, but it’s better.
To install it, go to the Anaconda page, click on “Download Anaconda”, pick your platform (Mac, Windows, or Linux), and download the Python 3.5 version. For the Mac, I’d advise picking the graphical installer option. Double-click on the downloaded package, follow the instructions.
When you’re finished, you should have an anaconda folder in your home folder
(which might not be immediately visible on the Mac—open your Documents folder
and then press command + up-arrow to move out of your Documents folder up in the
hierarchy, and at that point you should see the anaconda folder). Inside that
folder you should see an application called Navigator. If you already see a
python application in there, you can double click on that, but otherwise double-click
on Navigator and then install/launch Spyder.
This will give you a multipanel interface, with a temporary file on the left, and an “IPython console” in the lower right. The “IPython console” is basically like IDLE. You can drag the separators around to make it bigger.
I’ll use this in class from now on, so you can see how I use it there as well. This is new to me as of today as well, but I can already see that it’s going to much easier than using IDLE or Terminal would be, and having Anaconda installed is going to be useful later for using R and possibly other things that come with it.