An if/else statement checks a condition and runs exactly one of its paths — never both, never neither. Below is a real widget from epochai's own curriculum, not a flowchart diagram.
if age >= 18: is a question with a yes/no answer. If the condition is true, the code
indented under if runs. If it's false, the code under else runs instead. One
of those two blocks always runs — the other is skipped entirely, not just delayed.
The condition itself evaluates to a plain boolean, True or False, before the
branch decision even happens. age >= 18 with age = 20 evaluates to
True first; only then does the program decide which block to execute.
elif chains extend this to more than two options — Python checks each condition top to
bottom and runs the first one that's true, skipping the rest. Nothing after the first match gets
evaluated at all, which matters once conditions can overlap.
Module 1 — Programming Fundamentals — covers variables, control flow, loops, functions, and debugging. Free, no card required.