🎯 Your Goal: Write "Hello, World!"

Every programmer writes this program as their first one. It's a rite of passage! 🎓

Step 1: Open Your Text Editor

1. Open VS Code (or Notepad if you don't have VS Code)
2. Create a new file
3. Go to File → New File

Step 2: Write Your First Program

Type (don't copy-paste!) the following code:

print("Hello, World!")

That's it! Just one line of code. Here's what it means:

Step 3: Save Your File

1. Press Ctrl + S (or File → Save)
2. Name it: hello.py (the .py is important!)
3. Save it somewhere you'll remember (like your Desktop)

Step 4: Run Your Program!

1. Open Command Prompt (CMD) or PowerShell
2. Navigate to your file's folder (type: cd Desktop)
3. Type: python hello.py
4. Press Enter

🎉 You should see: Hello, World!

Let's Get Fancier!

Now try this code:

print("Hello, World!")
print("My name is Python!")
print("I'm awesome!")
print("")
print("Welcome to programming!")

Run this program and you'll see multiple lines of output! Each print() creates a new line.

More Examples to Try:

Example 1: Using Numbers

print(5 + 3)
print(10 * 4)
print(20 / 5)

Output: 8 40 4.0

Example 2: Combining Text and Numbers

print("I have", 5, "apples")

Output: I have 5 apples

Example 3: Getting Input from Users

name = input("What is your name? ")
print("Hello,", name)

When you run this, it asks for your name, then says hello!

Common Beginner Mistakes:

🔑 Key Points

• print() shows text or values on the screen.
• Strings (text) must be wrapped in quotes: "hello" or 'hello'.
• Numbers can be used directly: 5 + 3 returns 8.
• Use input() to read user input from the console.
• Save your scripts with the .py extension and run with python file.py.
• Common beginner errors: missing parentheses, wrong quotes, wrong file extension.

🧪 Try It Online

Quick online editors to experiment with code (safe and instant):

• W3Schools - Try Python
• Replit - Run Python in the browser
• GeeksforGeeks - Python examples

📝 Practice Exercises

1. Create a program that asks for the user's age and prints "You are X years old".
2. Write a small calculator that asks for two numbers and prints their sum, difference, product, and quotient.

# Exercise 1
age = input("How old are you? ")
print("You are", age, "years old")

# Exercise 2
x = float(input("Enter number 1: "))
y = float(input("Enter number 2: "))
print("Sum:", x + y)
print("Diff:", x - y)
print("Product:", x * y)
print("Quotient:", x / y if y != 0 else "undefined")

📚 Further Reading

Learn more reference-style material and examples from the originals:

• W3Schools Python Tutorial — clear, example-driven lessons.
• GeeksforGeeks Python — deeper articles and problem-focused explanations.

✅ Quick Quiz - Test Your Knowledge!

🎯 Challenge

Try writing a program that:

1. Asks the user for their favorite color
2. Displays "Your favorite color is [color]"
3. Save as favorite_color.py and run it

Hint: Use input() to get the user's input and print() to display it.