creating applications faster using an ide an interactive development environment (idehelps you create applications in specific language the integrated development environment (idleeditor that comes with python worked well for the needs of the bookbut you may find it limited after while for exampleidle doesn' provide the advanced debugging functionality that many developers favor in additionyou may find that you want to create graphical applicationswhich is difficult using idle you can talk to developers and get little consensus as to the best tool for any jobespecially when discussing ides every developer has favorite product and isn' easily swayed to try another developers invest many hours learning particular ide and extending it to meet specific requirements (when the ide allows such tamperingan inability (at timesto change ides later is why it' important to try number of different ides before you settle on one (the most common reason for not wanting to change an ide after you select one is that the project types are incompatiblewhich would mean having to re-create your projects every time you change editorsbut there are many other reasons that you can find listed online the pythoneditors wiki at moin/pythoneditors provides an extensive list of ides that you can try the table provides you with particulars about each editor so that you can eliminate some of the choices immediately checking your syntax with greater ease the idle editor provides some level of syntax highlightingwhich is helpful in finding errors for exampleif you mistype keywordit doesn' change color to the color used for keywords on your system seeing that it hasn' changed makes it possible for you to know to correct the error immediatelyinstead of having to run the application and find out later that something has gone wrong (sometimes after hours of debugging