Python is a free and open source general purpose programming language. The syntax is close to the natural language which makes it easy to learn for both beginners as well as experienced programmers. Python is widely used in the scientific community and is suitable for data analysis of large and complex datasets.
Python has become one of the most popular programming languages to work with because of its easy syntax and versatility. It can be used for tasks like scripting, web development, game development, graphic user interface, graphical analysis, scientific computing and numeric computing, data visualization, web scraping, data mining, data cleaning, data processing and modelling, descriptive and inferential statistics, natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence and much more.
You can download and install python using the Anaconda distribution which is recommended for data science and scientific computing. The package includes different IDE's (Integrated Development Environment) like Jupyter Notebook, Jupyter Lab, Spyder and and pre-installed Python packages.
Installation instructions for Windows
Installation instructions for Mac
It's possible to download Python directly from the Python Foundation website.
Dataquest has an installation guide which is helpful.
Google Colab is a cloud-based and open-source project which allows execution of Python code in a browser without installation of Python or an IDE. We can recommend Google Colab if you want to get up and start coding as fast as possible. Colab has most of the same features as Jupyter Notebooks and it will be used in the courses offered from the BI Library. You will need a Google account to use Google Colab and it will allow you to save your projects in your Google Drive.
Take a look at the guide How to Use Google Colab for Python for more information.
There are several good and helpful resources freely available and a quick search in your preferred search engine can help you. The list below is just a selection of resources which can be useful for beginners.