Welcome! We're very excited to start learning and building things with you! However, we need to get ourselves ready first.

In this chapter, we'll learn how to download and install everything you'll need throughout the book, including Python itself, all the Python packages that we'll need, and two development tools we will be using extensively: Jupyter and Visual Studio Code (VS Code). After that, we'll go through a brief overview of Jupyter and VS Code interfaces. Finally, you will run your very first line of Python, so we need to ensure that everything is ready before we dive in.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following:

• The minimum computer configuration required
• How to install the Anaconda distribution
• How to download the code for this book
• Setting up and getting familiar with VS Code and Jupyter
• Running your first line of code to ensure everything runs smoothly

By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about the hardware requirements for Python and this book, and what you can do if you don't have a sufficiently powerful computer. You will also learn how to install Python 3.7.2 and all required packages and tools using the open source Anaconda distribution.