files persistence so farwe have learned how to write programs and communicate our intentions to the central processing unit using conditional executionfunctionsand iterations we have learned how to create and use data structures in the main memory the cpu and memory are where our software works and runs it is where all of the "thinkinghappens but if you recall from our hardware architecture discussionsonce the power is turned offanything stored in either the cpu or main memory is erased so up to nowour programs have just been transient fun exercises to learn python what nextsoftware input and output devices central processing unit network main memory secondary memory figure secondary memory in this we start to work with secondary memory (or filessecondary memory is not erased when the power is turned off or in the case of usb flash drivethe data we write from our programs can be removed from the system and transported to another system