Your First Python Program

A Python program is simply a plain text file saved with a .py extension, such as hello.py. There is nothing more you need to set up before you can start writing actual, working code inside it.

This is quite different from Java, where every runnable program must live inside a class, with a public static void main(String[] args) method acting as the required entry point — boilerplate you have to write before a single line of your own logic runs. Python has no such requirement: a file can contain just one line, and that line is the entire program.

print("Hello, World!")

When you run a Python file, the interpreter reads it from top to bottom and executes each statement in the order it appears. There is no special starting point you need to declare, like main() in Java — the first line of the file is simply the first thing that runs.

Unlike Java, a runnable Python program does not need to be wrapped in a ____ or a main method.

By convention, Python files use lowercase names, with underscores separating words if needed — for example hello_world.py rather than HelloWorld.py. This lowercase, underscore-separated style (called snake_case) shows up throughout Python, not just in file names.

What must every Java program have that a Python program does not?

In Python, the interpreter runs the statements in a file from top to bottom, in the order they appear.