Integrating Python into Visual Studio

Python was created by Guido van Rossum in the early 1990s, and quickly developed a following among developers across the world. Python is a dynamic, general purpose language, well suited for all types of projects. Among its many features are support for multiple paradigms (object-oriented, functional, and so on), a rapid development cycle (thanks to its interpretive nature), and its structured approach to syntax.

Microsoft has released Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) so that those of us on the Microsoft platform can easily try and use Python within Visual Studio. Whether you would like to sample Python or create a new application from the ground up, you will be able to do so while using tools with which you are already familiar. In this recipe, we will see how Visual Studio can become a highly tuned Python development environment.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we first need to install PTVS. A link to the PTVS installer is included in VS2015. Open...