Welcome to lesson three how a program works. She's in Python. So right now we're gonna just talk about actually how Python works when you're getting into it. And the next lesson, get really excited, because in the next lesson, we get to do some hands on work. Yay. So onto how a program works using Python.
Okay, so before you can actually use Python, you have to install it, we have to download it, which means we're going to have the software copied from the download area to our actual computer, and then we're going to install it. So we're going to double click it and then install it on our computer and then we have to configure it. Not a whole lot of configuring to do but we still have to do a little bit of configuring before we can get it going. So Python actually has two different modes. It has interactive and it has script mode. So when you start using Python in interactive mode, a prompt is going to appear, it's going to wait for the user to type a statement into right next to the prompt.
And then once that statement executes, the prompt is going to reappear. And if statement is typed in correctly, you're going to get an error message. Now this is a great way to learn about the new parts in the Python, but it is not saved as a program when it is used in that way. However, when we're using Python in script mode, we can actually save our program to a file so we can save all those statements in the program to a file. The file name has to have the.py extension. And then to run that file or script, we're just going to type the Python file name at the operating system command line.
That is one way that you can do it. I personally Like to right click and edit a program with idle so that I can run it and then see the output. You're going to learn how to later on but if you just run everything from the command prompt, when you run the program, it'll come up and then it'll disappear before you see the actual results. So you got to kind of see how to do that before it will stay up. But I personally, I like using the idle programming environment to add it and show and once I get the program up and we talk about this in the next lesson, you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. In using the idle program environment, you should know that idle actually stands for Integrated Development Program environment, a single program that provides the tools to write execute and test the program is all in in that typical idle program is automatically installed.
It runs an interactive mode and it has a built In text editor now we finished lesson three. We've talked a little bit about the idle program in Python and actually how it works. The next lesson, we're actually going to download it. I'm so excited. And the nice and very cool thing about having the videos is listen, if you miss something while we're trying to download it while it's playing, just pause it, rewind it, and listen to it. Again, it's very easy to be able to make sure that you can follow along with the video.
Feel free to do that. Feel free to back it up. Feel free to do it again. And that's what these videos are for. Practice, practice, practice.