Python comes with its IDLE, and you can use it in this tutorial. If you

don't like using it for some reason, you need

[PowerShell, command prompt or terminal](installing-python.md) for

trying out things. You also need an editor for writing code that will

be stored in files.

If you use IDLE as your editor, it comes with everything set up for you

and you can get started right away. If you are going to use some other

editor, you may need to set

This is important. Never use tabs in Python. Nobody else is using tabs,

and the official style guide tells you to never use tabs.

However, **you don't need to press the spacebar four times every time

you want to indent**. Your editor should give you four spaces when you

hit the tab key. Your editor should also remove four spaces when you

hit backspace and there are four spaces before the cursor.

1. Create a file called `hello.py`, and open it in geany. Or create a

file in geany and save it as `hello.py`.

2. Go to Edit at the top and select Preferences.

3. Go to Editor at left.

4. Go to Indenting at top.

5. Select spaces instead of tabs.

If you type a keyword, like `if`, it should show up with a different

color than the rest of your text. `"Strings"`, `# comments` and

everything else should also have their own colors. This makes it much

easier to write code.

Geany has syntax highlighting by default. You can also install more

[color schemes](https://www.geany.org/Download/Extras#colors) if you

don't like the default colorsm and change the color scheme by clicking

View, then Change Color Scheme.

Advanced editors support plugins. You may find some of them useful.

On Debian-based GNU/Linux distributions, install the geany-plugins

package. See [the Geany website](https://plugins.geany.org/) for

instructions for other platforms.