Hello World in Python

Our first program will print the classic “hello world” message. Here’s the full source code.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print("hello world")

To run the program, save the code in a file named hello_world.py and use the python command to execute it.

$ python hello_world.py
hello world

Since Python is an interpreted language, we typically run the scripts directly rather than building them into binaries. However, if you want to create a standalone executable, you can use a tool like PyInstaller.

First, install PyInstaller (if not already installed):

$ pip install pyinstaller

Then, create a standalone executable from the script:

$ pyinstaller --onefile hello_world.py
$ ls dist/
hello_world

We can then execute the built binary directly.

$ dist/hello_world
hello world

Now that we can run and build basic Python programs, let’s learn more about the language.