TensorFlow is distributed by Google using the wheels standard. It is a ZIP format archive with the .whl extension. Python 3.6, the default Python interpreter in Anaconda 3, does not have wheels installed. At the time of writing the book, wheel support for Python 3.6 exists only for Linux/Ubuntu. Therefore, while creating the TensorFlow environment, we specify Python 3.5. This installs pip, python, and wheel along with a few other packages in the conda environment named tensorflow.

Once the conda environment is created, the environment is activated using the source activate/activate command. In the activated environment, use the pip install command with appropriate TensorFlow-API URL to install the required TensorFlow. Although there exists an Anaconda command to install TensorFlow CPU using conda forge TensorFlow documentation recommends using pip install. After installing TensorFlow in the conda environment, we can deactivate it. Now you are ready to execute your first TensorFlow program.

When the program runs, you may see a few warning (W) messages, some information (I) messages, and lastly the output of your code:

Welcome to the exciting world of Deep Neural Networks!

Congratulations for successfully installing and executing your first TensorFlow code! We will go through the code in more depth in the next recipe.