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Introduction to Setting Up Python

Python is a versatile programming language that is widely used in software engineering, machine learning, and bioinformatics. In this lesson, you will learn how to set up your Python development environment on your local machine. This will allow you to write and run Python code, install packages, and manage dependencies.

Installing Python

Before you start setting up your Python environment, you should check if Python is already installed on your machine. Open a terminal window and run the following command:

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python --version

# in newer versions of MacOS, you may need to use python3
python3 --version

For this course we will use Python 3.12, you can download the latest 3.12.x version from the Python website.