IDLE is an integrated development environment for working in python, that is available in both OS X and Windows. It gives you the ability to type python commands in the command line and execute them. It also allows you to search for files, debug python programs, create and edit python programs, and run them. For those of you with a text book, these instructions are similar to the ones in Appendix B in the text book.
To test out the ability for it to run python commands, type the following, and then press enter: print “Death to Videodrome. Long live The New Flesh.”
This will most likely print out a famous quote from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (which all of you should watch).
Once you start doing assignments, you’ll quickly realize that being able to run one line of code, or simple python statements, isn’t really all of that interesting. In order to create a program that is editable, you have to create a new window. This is done by clicking file new window, as in the image below.
Now we have an editor that we can run programs from. Let’s write some code, as shown below:
Now, save the file through the file menu, and we can run the program going under run, as in the image below:
If the program works, you will see “The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42″ in the Python Shell (which, I should note, IDLE is called once it is running). This should be enough for you all to get started. Good luck using IDLE.
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