Hands-on with Visual Studio Code, your text editor

In this course, you will learn to code using Microsoft Visual Studio Code. This is an application that you can use to write and edit Python programs. It also has an integrated environment to execute Python commands (the terminal/Python interpreter) so you can run your code and see the results.

First, you will need to install Python and Visual Studio Code on your computer. The steps vary depending on your specific operating system.

Prepare

• Download and install Python 3.11.5 or newer 
• Download and install Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

The “Hello, world” program

Create a simple program

Follow the instructions below to create your first ‘Hello world’ Python program.

1. Open Visual Studio Code
2. Create a new file by clicking File → New File.
3. Save the file by pressing CTRL + S (or CMD + S on a Mac).
4. Name the file hello-world.py
5. You can write your code in the Editor Pane (see below): 

print('Hello, world!')

Run the code

1. From the menu bar, click Terminal → New Terminal
2. Run your program by typing python hello-world.py (and then hit the ENTER key) in the terminal pane.
3. Observe the message hello, world! printed in the terminal!

Congratulations! You just created and executed your first simple Python program!