Visual Studio Code or vscode is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, Go) and runtimes (such as .NET and Unity). In this post, I will explain step by step guide on how to install vscode ide on windows. We will install vscode and setup python environment to execute python programs.
Step by Step guide on how to install Visual Studio Code or vscode on Windows
Step 1 Download Visual Studio Code from official website
Link to download visual studio code: https://code.visualstudio.com/download
Step 2 Once the download is complete, run the exe file to install Visual Studio Code. The setup wizard should have started. Click “Next”.
Step 3 in the next screen, change the installation path if required, else leave it and click next.
Step 4 Just click next
Step 5 Check all the boxes
It will make VS Code available in “open with” option. It will help you to open the vs code supported file just by right clicking on the file and selecting open with vscode. Also check the add to path check box so that vs code is added to path variable.
Step 6 Just click Install.
Step 7 Wait for the installation to finish.
Step 8 Click finish to complete the installation. as the Launch Visual Studio Code option is checked it will open the VS code screen.
Step 9 Once you click finish, you will see the below screen.
Alternatively, next time you can also open vs code using the start menu, and typing vscode in the search option as below.
Now the Visual Studio Code is installed. we will see one example on how to setup python and execute a python program. For this you need to install python if not already installed.
Please follow the step by step guide to install python on windows from this link:
How to Install Python on Windows [VSCODE IDE]
Alternatively you can also install python extension from vs code extension as below.
Now just to check, if you search again the Python extension, it will say python already installed with a option to disable or uninstall it as below.
Now click on file menu and select new file.It will create an empty file.
in the first line type print(“hello-world”) and do ctr+s . Then it will ask to save the file with a name. So rename it with firstProgram.py
Now you will see the line color is changed as per the python interpreter selected by default. However, if it is not taking by default then you can select the interpreter by pressing “ctrl shift p”
once you press “ctrl shift p” then you will see a pop up window will be visible at top there you type python interpreter and click on “Select Interpreter”.
Now you will see the available python interpreter in your system. Select the one you want to use.
Next from the menu select “Terminal” and click on New Terminal as below:
It will create a terminal at the bottom of the screen as below.
Now to execute, type python filename.py to execute the program. And you will see the output in the terminal as below:
So this is all about installing the Visual Studio Code on Windows and setup the python interpreter and finally execute the first hello-world program using visual studio IDE.
Please check out my articles on Machine Learning Tutorial.
