This chapter is taken from the book A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python by H. P. Langtangen, 5th edition, Springer, 2016.
Anaconda is a free Python distribution produced by Continuum Analytics and contains over 400 Python packages, as well as Python itself, for doing a wide range of scientific computations. Anaconda can be downloaded from http://continuum.io/downloads.
The Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Spyder is included with Anaconda and is my recommended tool for writing and running Python programs on Mac and Windows, unless you have preference for a plain text editor for writing programs and a terminal window for running them.
Spyder is started by typing spyder in a (new) Terminal application.
If you get an error message unknown locale, you need to type the
following line in the Terminal application, or preferably put the line
in your $HOME/.bashrc Unix initialization file:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
After installing Anaconda you have the conda tool at hand for
installing additional packages registered on
binstar.org. For example,
Terminal> sudo conda install --channel johannr scitools
(You do not need sudo on Windows.)
Anaconda also installs the pip tool that is handy for installing additional
packages that are not on binstar.org.
In a Terminal application on Mac or in a PowerShell terminal
on Windows, write
Terminal> sudo pip install --user packagename
(Drop sudo on Windows.)