Setup

Some slight assumptions are going to be made. I presume you own a computer, or at least have access to one. I am also going to assume it is of a Mac, Linux, or Windows variety. A further presumption is that you have Python 3 installed, a terminal program to access it, and the Python package installer, pip.

If the above is not true, there are a few remedies:

• Buy a computer
• Figure out how to install Python
• Select and install a terminal program
• Install pip

I also highly suggest using a virtual environment so you can keep your global Python installation nice and tidy, and can work in a separate environment that you can play around with and install different Python packages. This is a complex topic by itself, so for the remainder of this book, the assumption is that you are operating in such an environment. I use virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper, but you should use whatever works for you.

Once you are ready, you can install IPython by running:

pip install ipython

We can test that IPython was successfully installed by entering:

ipython --version

7.19.0