QuteCsound is the the easiest way to get up and running with Csound, with its friendly GUI and host of examples. Though it is not the only way to work with Csound. A strong alternative used by many is the command-line terminal. If you are into linux, than the terminal is probably a better match for you.
Jean-Luc wrote an article for The Csound Journal titled Working with the terminal in OSX: An absolute beginner’s guide. This will gently introduce you to the basics of using Csound from a command prompt and start to prepare you for concepts covered later in the semester, such as utilizing Csound as an audio batch processor. One note about the article, as of OS X 10.5, it is no longer necessary to add usr/local/bin to the path, rendering the second half of section II irrelevant; Csound will run in the terminal out of the box.