You need to make sure you create a Pydev project. If you don t already have a Python interpreter installed, you ll need to get one (this is mainly a problem on Windows, ActiveState is a great commercial grade distribution, python.org also has some great free builds of Python.) Once this is complete, you ll need to get into your global Pydev preferences (not the preferences for your specific project, but for all Pydev projects) and select the interpreter of your choice. Pydev will automatically scan the libraries included with your interpreter distribution and make them available for code completion. Then, you ll need to create a source file in the src folder that contains code. Run it by choosing a run configuration that matches up with your interpreter choice (regular old Python in your case, not Iron python or Jpython). Most entry point python modules will have a main function like in C/C++ that looks like this: What does if __name__ == "__main__": do?