Is Python a

Which Option Should I Use?With all these options, one question naturally arises: which one is best for me? Ingeneral, you should use the IDLE interface for development if you are just gettingstarted with Python. It provides a user-friendly GUI environment, and can hide someof the underlying configuration details. It also comes with a platform-neutral texteditor for coding your scripts, and it’s a standard and free part of the Python system.If, on the other hand, you are an experienced programmer, you might be more comfortablewith simply the text editor of your choice in one window, and anotherwindow for launching the programs you edit via system command lines and iconclicks (indeed, this is how your author develops Python programs, but he has a Unixbiasedpast). Because development environments are a very subjective choice, I can’toffer much more in the way of universal guidelines; in general, whatever environmentyou like to use will usually be the best for you to use.Chapter SummaryIn this chapter, we’ve looked at common ways to launch Python programs: by runningcode typed interactively, and by running code stored in files with systemcommand lines, file-icon clicks, module imports, and IDE GUIs such as IDLE. We’vecovered a lot of pragmatic startup territory here. This chapter’s goal was to equipyou with enough information that you can start working along with the code we’llstart writing in the next part of the book. There, we will start exploring the Pythonlanguage itself, beginning with its core data types.First, though, take the usual chapter quiz to exercise what you’ve learned here.Because this is the last chapter in this part of the book, it’s followed with a set ofmore complete exercises that test your mastery of this entire part’s topics. For helpwith the latter set of problems, or just for a refresher, turn to Appendix B.58 | Chapter 3: How You Run Programs