Emacs comes with Python programming support through the built-in
Python-mode. Whenever you are editing Python code run C-h m to
look at the Python mode key bindings. Alternatively look at the
menu bar entries under Python. To toggle the menu bar press F12.
Prelude ships with Flycheck,
an on the fly syntax checker. Flycheck has support for two Python
syntax checkers, Pylint and
Flake8. In
order to have Flycheck support on the fly syntax checking for
Python you need to have either of these installed and accessible to
Emacs. In order to manually choose a checker run C-c ! s.