How useful do you find the interactive interpreter?

[Matt Butler]

slaytanic_killer at disinfo.net (slaytanic killer) wrote in message news:<4688f24b.0106231658.43d2c446 at posting.google.com>...
> I am looking at Python seriously, and I can see that the interpreter
> would be really good for testing out ideas.  Getting small things to
> work and then switching over to a text editor to generalize what I've
> learned.  Is this how people generally use it?  Or is it an even
> deeper part of coding?

It is definitely useful in that exact way.  Frequently I leave it open
in addition to my editor, mainly for testing syntax before sticking it
deep down in hard to reach parts of larger projects.