Portfolio Assignment 1

Setting up your development environment

Our first step in building your data mining portfolio is simple: get your programming environment set up.

We will be programming in Python, and your portfolio will be stored in a source control management (scm) system, specifically, Subversion.

The first assignment is to:

• Download and install Python 2.5.2 (win32 users should try ActivePython)
• Run the Python interpreter to ensure successful installation and learn how to exit from the interpreter
• Download and install Subversion
• optional, win32: Download and install TortoiseSVN
• Set up your executable paths, if necessary (so you can run python and svn from any path)
• Set up your main source directory in an easily-accessible location

The point of this assignment is to make sure that you can sit down at your machine and get to programming quickly, without having to fiddle around every time you want to create something. The tools you use should never get in your way.