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Alright, let’s get started!
All right, great!
In this lesson, we will start coding!
One of the main concepts in programming is variables.
They are your best friends.
You will deal with them all the time.
You will use them to store information.
They will represent your data input.
Let’s say you want to have a variable x that is equal to the value of 5 and then ask
the computer to tell you the value of that variable.
So, we must tell the machine that x equals 5.
And this is how you could do this in Python.
Type x equals 5.
To go through the process of programming, the line that says x equals 5 is called a
command or a program.
This is just a line of text.
To make something out of it, we must execute it.
Only then will the computer carry out operations with it.
Press Shift and Enter (not just Enter), and a variable called x will be created and assigned
with a value of 5.
To be more precise, “equality” in Python and in programming means “assign” or “bind
to”.
Ok, we carried this operation, but we see nothing right now.
How can we ask the computer to show us the output of what we just did?
It would be sufficient to write x and then press Shift and Enter.
And here’s the result – 5.
Great.
As you can see, typing in a single line of code entails a few concepts of programming
simultaneously.
Now, let’s assign the value 8 to a variable we call y. … Alright, Shift plus Enter…
and we can check y.
However, I’ll type capital Y.
Oh!
An error!
This shows us that Python is case sensitive, so pay attention to that.
It matters if you use lowercase or uppercase letters.
An alternative way to execute the instruction that will provide the value we assigned to
y would be to use the print command.
At first sight, it seems redundant as we showed we can just type “y”.
Nevertheless, this command is applied often; you’ll see it in most of the code produced
by professionals.
It complements the logical flow of your instructions.
For instance, if we say “print y”, the machine will simply execute this command and
provide the value of y as a statement, and this is all a programmer must see sometimes.
The last thing I’d like to share with you in this lecture is you can assign a certain
number of values to the same number of variables.
To create the variables x and y, we have to assign two values – say, 1 and 2.
We must separate each of the variables and each of the values with a comma.
The parentheses here are not obligatory, but we use them to improve the readability of
our code.
Now, if I call x or y separately, the computer will correctly give me their respective values.
It is very important that the number of variables on that line equals the number of values;
otherwise, you will get an error message.
See?
Great!
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