Set Up Your IDE

Development is better with an IDE. For python, most of our team uses VSCode. Here’s how to install VSCode and set it up to work well with TCode.

Prerequisites

We’re assuming that you’re coming from the previous tutorial and are assuming the following:

• You have a compatible python version installed (3.11+)

• You have uv installed and available on your command line

• You have a uv environment with tcode-api installed

If any of this looks unfamiliar, back you go to the previous tutorial.

Note

We recommend using a virtual environment manager like uv to manage your python. If you prefer to use venv or conda, you can still follow along, but some commands will be different.

Install VSCode

Follow the instructions on their website for your computer’s operating system:

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

Open Project in VSCode

In your VSCode window’s top menu bar, select “File” > “Open…”, then select your project folder.

If you see the pop-up window below, select “Save” and save the workspace as a file. Now, we can easily re-open our workspace setup.

You should now have an “Explorer” window on the left-hand side of your screen with the files we saw in the previous tutorial using ls.

Select Python Interpreter

Now we need to tell VSCode to use the python environment that we set up using uv.

1. In the VSCode search bar [TODO IMAGE], type the following: > Python: Select Interpreter.

2. VSCode will then prompt you with a list of the python versions that you have available. If your uv project is open in VSCode, one of the entries should have a filepath that reads ./.venv/bin/python. This is the python interpreter that uses the virtual environment (or “venv”) set up by uv. In my drop-down, it comes “Recommended” (fancy!). Select that one.

Install VSCode Python Extension

Finally, in order to get tools to make our Python dev work easier (typehints, docstrings, etc), we need to install VSCode’s handy-dandy python extension.

Navigate to the following link and click the “Install” button, then follow the prompts to open the installation page in VSCode itself. Clicking “Install” there gets you the packages.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-python.python

Write Your First Script

Your environment should now be set up!