Today we’ll be learning printing, variables, and datatypes.

First, create a new python file (name it whatever) and open it in your preferred editor. Write the following line:

print("Hello World")

Then run the code. In the console, you should see Hello World outputted.

Congratulations, you just wrote your first line of code in Python!

Let’s walk through what this code does:

print: This is the main function we are calling. print outputs text to the console.
(): These go around the data we want to feed into the function.
"": This go around the text, which tells the function we are using a string datatype (more on that later).
Hello World: This is the text we want to print

When coding, it’s important to follow the syntax. Syntax is the specific format you have to write code in, in order for the computer to read it properly.

Try changing the contents of that code to output something else. Make sure to keep the text within the "" and ().

You can have multiple print statements, like this:

print("Hello World")
print("How are you doing?")

Variables

Variables are a way to store data that can be used multiple times. Here’s an example:

a = "Hello World"
print(a)

This code does two things:

1. Sets the variable a to "Hello World"
2. Prints the contents of that variable.

Notice how we didn’t put quotes around the variable when printing it. This is because you only put "" around strings, like when we set a to "Hello World".

Datatypes

There are several types of data in Python, each with their own syntax and properties. Here’s a few of them:

String:

We’ve been usings strings so far here. You must put "" around strings, and they can hold any text.
String examples:
"Hello World"
"Hi, my name is Kraggle09"
"I love pizza"

Integer:

An integer (int) is just a number. You can put any non-decimal number in an int, and unlike strings, you don’t need to put "" around them.
Integer examples:
42
193
3

Float:

A float is like an int, but supports decimals.
Float examples:
3.14
0.01
3.333333

You can mix and match different datatypes easily in python, like this:

money = 438.29
score = 87
print("How much money do I have?")
print(money)
print("What percentage score did I get?")
print(score)
print("Am I happy?")
print("Yes")

Notice how variables can hold not only strings, but also integers, floats, and many other data types.

Comments

Finally, I want to quickly touch on comments. Comments allow you to add notes to your code, like this:

# This sets a variable
a = "Hello World"

Anything within a comment won’t be read by the computer, so you can put anything in a comment without messing up your program.

You can also add a comment inline with normal code:

a = "Hello World" # This sets a variable