Starting with Python

For this article, I shall defer installation of Python to this Codecademy article and start promptly with programming basics:

• commenting
• defining functions
• outputting text

"Hello, world"

In the following starter code, we shall observe a few things:

# helloworld.py - this is a comment

def main():
  print('hello world - this prints the stuff in the main function')
  secondary_function()

def secondary_function():
  print('prints when calling this function from main')
  tertiary_function()

def tertiary_function():
  print('prints when calling this function from secondary_function')

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

• commenting
  • most with programming experience (and without Python experience) might gather that the first line represents a comment (starting with # to denote its role as a comment)
• indentation consistency
  • in Python, we must indent to help both the human and the computer reading the code
• def keyword
  • used to define a function
• main function
  • when the program runs, it will call this function (unless otherwise specified)
• print function
  • when the program runs, it will output the contents inside the brackets
• if statement
  • in this context, we use this statement to determine whether
    • the program will run on its own (__main__), or
    • as an imported package in another script