Understanding how to store and manipulate data with variables, and knowing the different types of data (such as integers, floats, strings, and booleans) that can be used.

What are variables?

Variables are like storage containers for data. In math, we usually use variable to store numerical values like integers or decimals.

<aside> 💡 Variables are the storage containers in our coding kitchen to store ingredients.

</aside>

Declaring a variable

In most programming languages, you will need to declare or setup a variable using some type of statement. Here is a simple variable declaration written in Python:

x = 1

X is the variable name

= is what we use in most languages to declare a variable and set its value.

1 is the value

Naming Variables

There are some best practices when it comes to naming your variables, and some languages will have specific rules and conventions to follow.

⚠️ Variables names should be meaningful and help describe what the value or data represents.

Let’s continue our food and cooking analog with variable naming conventions. Let’s say we want to create a variable that represents the amount of flour a recipe calls for.

	flour_amount = 2 # 2 cups of flour 

Whitespace in programming languages is generally avoided when naming

1. Camel Case (camelCase):
   • Usage: Commonly used in JavaScript, Java, and several other programming languages.
   • Format: The first letter of the first word is lowercase, and the first letter of each subsequent word is capitalized. There are no spaces or underscores.
   • Example: userName, totalItemCount
2. Snake Case (snake_case):
   • Usage: Widely used in Python, Ruby, and other languages for variable names and sometimes function names.
   • Format: All letters are lowercase, and words are separated by underscores.
   • Example: user_name, total_item_count
3. Pascal Case (PascalCase):
   • Usage: Often used in C#, Pascal, and for naming classes in many languages.
   • Format: Similar to camel case, but the first letter of every word is capitalized, including the first one.
   • Example: UserName, TotalItemCount

Best Practices for Naming Variables