Page 239 - Beginning Programming with Pyth - John Paul Mueller

more complicated functions, but these functions work well for the purposes of this chapter.
Understanding the package types
The Python support system is immense. In fact, you’ll likely never use more than a small fraction of it for even the most demanding applications. It’s not that Python itself is all that huge; the language is actually somewhat concise compared to many other languages out there. The immensity comes from the Python system of packages that perform everything from intense scientific work, to AI, to space exploration, to biologic modeling, to anything else you can imagine and many things you can’t. However, not all those packages are available all the time, so you need some idea of what sort of packages Python supports and where you might find them (in order of preference):
Built-in: The built-in packages address most common needs. You find them in the Adaconda3\Lib folder on your system, and all you need to do to use them is import them into your application.
Custom: As demonstrated in this chapter, you can create your own packages and use them as needed. They appear on your hard drive, normally in the same directory as your project code, and you simply import them into your application.
Conda: You can find a wealth of packages specifically designed for Anaconda. Many of these packages appear at http://conda.anaconda.org/mutirri. Before you can use these packages, you must install them by using the conda utility at the Anaconda command line, as described in the “Installing conda packages” section of this chapter. After you have the package installed, you use it as you would any built-in package.
Non-conda: Just because a package isn't specifically designed for use with Anaconda doesn’t mean that you can’t use it. You can find a great wealth of packages from third parties that provide significant functionality. To install these packages, you use the pip utility at the Anaconda command line, as described in the “Installing packages by using pip” section, later in this chapter. After you have the package installed, you may have to perform additional configuration as described