DEV Community: somos

How to Create Variables using any Language

somos — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 02:58:28 +0000

What Are Variables?

Variables can be used to store information that can be manipulated and referenced in a computer program. They provide a way to label data with descriptive names so that our code can be understood better.

Variables can be thought of as containers that hold information. They label and store data that can be used later throughout your program.

Variables in Java

In Java there are different types of variables:

String - stores a string of text characters (i.e. "Hello".) String values are surrounded by double quotes
int - stores whole numbers (integers) with no decimal point (123 or -123.)
float - stores floating decimal point numbers (i.e 19.99 or -19.99.)
char - stores single characters (i.e 'a' or 'B'.) Char values are surrounded by single quotes
Boolean - stores values with two states: true or false

To create a variable, you must specify the type and assign it a value:

type variables = value;

JavaScript Variables

JavaScript gives you seven different data types:

undefined
null
boolean
string
symbol
number
object

You can create a variable in JavaScript by putting the keyword var in front of it.

var myName;

You can store a value inside the variable using the assignment operator.

var myName;

myName = "Tom";

But it is mostly common to initialize a variable in the same line you declare it.

var myName = "Tom";

Variables with C

With C and C based languages like C++ and C#, there are different types of variables defined with different keywords.

int - Whole numbers, without decimals (i.e 123 or -123)
double- stores numbers with floating decimal points (i.e 19.99 or -19.99)
char - stores single text characters (i.e 'a' or 'B')
bool - stores values with two states true or false

To declare a variable in C, you must specify the type and assign it a value.

type variable = value;

Python Variables

Unlike many of the other programming languages, Python has no command for declaring a variable. It is created the moment you first assign a value to it.

A variable name can be short (x and y) or descriptive (age, carName, total_volume.)

Here are some common rules for Python variables:

Must start with a letter or the underscore character
Cannot start with a number
Can only contain alpha numeric characters and underscores (A-Z, 0-9, and _ )
Are case-sensitive (age, Age, and AGE are all different variables)

What's Important?

All syntax aside the most important part of learning variables, and any other part of programming is to be sure to understand the logic and methodology behind it. You shouldn't just memorize the syntax as if you were studying for a vocabulary test.

If you understand the logic behind what you are coding, it is easy to figure out how to solve any issue using your programming knowledge.

2/100 Days of Code

somos — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 22:48:09 +0000

On day two of this challenge I woke up and got straight to coding,
I saw a simple responsive web navbar on Instagram and got some motivation to dive more into media queries as I was having a bit of trouble understanding them.

I wrote the whole code from scratch on VSCode and then copied it over to codepen, just to show it off easier of course. I followed the CSS part for the media queries in a tutorial-kind-of-way but then added on to it and made it my own.

I understand media queries much more now but will come back to visit them again in the future, as I do know how important they are, or at least how important it is to make a website responsive specially in this mobile-first era.
Maybe there will be a much simpler way to do this further down the line.

Any advice or help is welcome :)
Cya !

1/100 Days of Code

somos — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 22:45:44 +0000

I decided to use dev.to as a journal to log my progress during the #100daysofcode. You know, to spice it up a bit.

It just happened that the day I decided to start this challenge is the same day I started the Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures certification on freeCodeCamp.org, so today that's what I did.

I completed 35% of the curriculum, we went over variables, integers, floats, operators, strings, and string continuation. Nothing new apart from the syntax as I have minimal knowledge on the basic fundementals of coding thanks to a few Python courses that I took in the past (I don't know much at all, but do understand the basic building blocks of the code.)

Excited for whats to come!
I will most likely be following and completing this curriculum during the next 99 days along with practicing and reviewing things I learned in the Responsive Web curriculum - the previous one.

Cya !