Python Projects for Beginners a ten-Week Bootcamp Approach to Python Programming

Note remember from the first chapter, when working in terminal, you’ll see the $ next to the commands that we enter. For the next few sections, we’ll be working inside of terminal.
What Is Pip?
Pip is the standard package manager for Python. Anytime you need to download, uninstall, or manage a library or module to use within your project, you use pip. It has been included in all installations of Python since v3.4. To check your version of pip, write the following in terminal:

$ pip --version

Feel free to visit the Python Package Index (PyPI) to view all the possible libraries that you’re able to download. You can use any of them in your future projects. For today, we’ll learn how to install and use the requests module, but first, let’s create and activate a virtual environment.

Creating a Virtual Environment

One of the big reasons Anaconda is such a wonderful tool is because of its ability to organize virtual environments for us. We’re going to use it to create our first virtual environment. While in terminal, type in the following command:

$ conda create --name data_analysis python=3.7

Go ahead and run the command. It’ll then ask you if you’d like to proceed by typing in “y” or “n”, simply type “y” for yes and hit enter. A folder will be created within the Anaconda directory in our program files. The folder will be given the name of “data_analysis.” We’ve just created our own virtual environment using Python version 3.7. In order to use it, we must activate it. If you wanted to use Python’s default virtual environment system, you can use the keyword “virtualvenv.” Be sure to look that up if you’re interested. We will use Conda’s environments for the ease of use throughout this
chapter.
Note You can create a conda environment from anywhere; you do not need to be cd’ed into a specific folder.
CHapter 10 INtroduCtIoN to data aNalYsIs