If you already have Anaconda installed, you can skip this step.
You can download Miniconda from here. Make sure you download the 64-bit version and Python 3.x. This is very similar to Anaconda but more lightweight, it will be used to create and manage the Python environment used.
The Python environment is a specific installation of Python and libraries that you use for a project, you should use different environments for different projects, making sure you do not mix depedencies.
To create the Python environment to be used, follow the following steps:
conda create --name ds python=3.7
conda activate ds
pip install -r requirements.txt
This will create a new environment called "ds" with Python version 3.7, activate this environment and install all the packages required (such as Scikit-Learn, Pandas ,etc.). Your commanda line must be pointing at the folder ("cd" to the folder) with the code for the "pip install" command to work.
Development is recommended to be done using PyCharm Community, which can be downloaded here. After opening the code folder with PyCharm, sure to configure the correct conda environment to be the one on which the code runs.
pip freeze > requirements.txt
The directory structure of your new project looks like this (please adjust the structure and its description to best fit your project):
├── README.md <- the top-level README.
│
├── docs <- resources on Data Science and Data Mining.
│
├── data <- folder to place data
│
├── notebooks <- jupyter notebooks
│
├── src <- code
│
└── requirements.txt <- environmnet package requirements