Installation

Mainly—as far as I know—there are two ways to get python. One is straight from python.org. The other one is to install python via Anaconda. The preferred one will be via Anaconda^1* cause this helps us ease the pain of package management in the future.

Anaconda

Go on to https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual, and scroll down to find Anaconda Installers. The default python version should now be later than 3.7^2**. If you are using Windows or Mac, feel free to install via the graphical installer (recommended for people without any knowledge about the command line/terminal). However, installation via the command line installer is much elegant and clean (default for Linux user).

Installation via the command line (an example for Mac & Linux)

Right-click to copy the link for command line installer, then open the terminal and type wget^3**, follow a space, then paste the url, e.g.,

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/archive/Anaconda3-2020.07-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

(make sure to copy the url from Anaconda web page to get the latest python version).
After the download is finished, type bash, follow by a space, and then type the file name you just downloaded to start the installation, e.g.,

bash Anaconda3-2020.07-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

After the installation is done, type python and press Enter to see if you have something like this:

Python 3.7.7 (default, Mar 26 2020, 10:32:53)
[Clang 4.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_401/final)] :: Anaconda, Inc. on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

Make sure that your python version is later than 3.7.X, and with Anaconda, Inc. ^†. Type exit() to leave.

The benefit of installing via the command line is that you can get rid of the bulky UI, and open the ipython, jupyter lab/notebook IDE from the terminal faster. This effect can be more severe when you have a small RAM (<16GB), and less powerful CPUs.

Learn More:

1*: Find out the relationship between Conda and Anaconda.
2**: Find out the difference between python 2.7.X and python 3.X.
3**: Oh Noooo! Wget cannot work on my Mac, what should I Dooooo?! Well, curl might help.

Fun Fact:

†: Do you know that every Mac is pre-installed with python?! However, the pre-installed version is out off date, py2.7. Thus, don’t be lazy and download the latest version now!!