Setting up Python Environment-PyCharm

Python can be installed on Windows, Mac as well as Linux. Since I plan to learn programming on Linux, I was searching for IDE for Python on Linux.

For beginners, IPython, IDLE and pyCharm are good to get started.

IPython can be accessed from Linux terminal. Here, I printed Hello word! (Word as in WordPress 🙂

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IDLE is Python’s Integrated Development and Learning Environment. It is coded in Python using tkinter GUI toolkit. It is simple but has quite a number of useful features. Please refer to https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html for more documentation.

PyCharm is an IDE from Jetbrains (https://www.jetbrains.com). It is easy to install on Linux Mint. There are 2 versions of the Pycharm IDE – Professional which is a licensed edition. There is also a free Community Edition which can be downloaded. I downloaded Community Edition.

Installation instruction are available on the download site (https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/#section=linux). All you need to do is unpack pycharm tar.gz and use pycharm.sh from bin subdirectory.

After installation is completed, I added PyCharm Community Edition to my Dock (Plank) for easier access.

Once IDE is opened, from File –> Settings–> Project Interpreter, python interpreter can be selected.

I am learning Python 3.x and hence selected. Python 3.5.2.

All the additional packages (like numpy, pandas, matplotlib, pyQt5 etc) installed are displayed here.

Below is a screenshot of sample program(which I took from internet) executed in PyCharm IDE to display combinations numbers whose sum is adding up to a number.

Overall, PyCharm Community Edition is nice IDE with powerful features.