Many PCs and Macs will have python already installed.
To check if you have python installed on a Windows PC, search in the start bar for Python or run the following on the Command Line (cmd.exe):
C:\Users\Your Name>python --version
To check if you have python installed on a Linux or Mac, then on linux open the command line or on Mac open the Terminal and type:
python --version
If you find that you do not have Python installed on your computer, then you can download it for free from the following website: https://www.python.org/
To check if you have PyCharm installed on a Windows PC, search in the start bar for Python or run the following on the Command Line (cmd.exe):
pycharm --version
Python is an interpreted programming language, this means that as a developer you write Python (.py) files in a IDE or in a text editor and then put those files into the python interpreter to be executed.
The way to run a python file is like this on the command line:
C:\Users\Your Name>python helloworld.py
Where "helloworld.py" is the name of your python file.
Let's write our first Python file, called helloworld.py, which can be done in any IDE or text editor.