windows users fetch and run self-installing executable file that puts python on their machines simply double-click and say yes or next at all prompts linux and mac os users probably already have usable python preinstalled on their computers--it' standard component on these platforms today some linux and mac os users (and most unix userscompile python from its full source code distribution package linux users can also find rpm filesand mac os users can find various macspecific installation packages other platforms have installation techniques relevant to those platforms for instancepython is available on cell phonestabletsgame consolesand ipodsbut installation details vary widely python itself may be fetched from the downloads page on its main websitepython org it may also be found through various other distribution channels keep in mind that you should always check to see whether python is already present before installing it if you're working on windows and earlieryou'll usually find python in the start menuas captured in figure - we'll discuss the menu options shown here in the next on unix and linuxpython probably lives in your /usr directory tree because installation details are so platform-specificwe'll postpone the rest of this story here for more details on the installation processconsult appendix for the purposes of this and the nexti'll assume that you've got python ready to go program execution what it means to write and run python script depends on whether you look at these tasks as programmeror as python interpreter both views offer important perspectives on python programming the programmer' view in its simplest forma python program is just text file containing python statements for examplethe following filenamed script pyis one of the simplest python scripts could dream upbut it passes for fully functional python programprint('hello world'print( * this file contains two python print statementswhich simply print string (the text in quotesand numeric expression result ( to the power to the output stream don' worry about the syntax of this code yet--for this we're interested only how python runs programs