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Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners

You're reading from   Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners Learn essential computer science concepts and coding techniques to kick-start your programming career

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jul 2020
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781839216862
Length 430 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Joakim Wassberg Joakim Wassberg
Author Profile Icon Joakim Wassberg
Joakim Wassberg
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Table of Contents (19) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section 1: Introduction to Computer Programs and Computer Programming
2. Chapter 1: Introduction to Computer Programs FREE CHAPTER 3. Chapter 2: Introduction to Programming Languages 4. Chapter 3: Types of Applications 5. Chapter 4: Software Projects and How We Organize Our Code 6. Section 2: Constructs of a Programming Language
7. Chapter 5: Sequence – The Basic Building Block of a Computer Program 8. Chapter 6: Working with Data – Variables 9. Chapter 7: Program Control Structures 10. Chapter 8: Understanding Functions 11. Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong – Bugs and Exceptions 12. Chapter 10: Programming Paradigms 13. Chapter 11: Programming Tools and Methodologies 14. Section 3: Best Practices for Writing High-Quality Code
15. Chapter 12: Code Quality 16. Other Books You May Enjoy Appendix A: How to Translate the Pseudocode into Real Code 1. Appendix B: Dictionary

Chapter 8: Understanding Functions

There are a number of useful concepts that we, as programmers, always should follow. One is to write code that is easy to read and understand. Another is to avoid duplicating code. When you start out your career as a programmer, you will find yourself copying and pasting code and just changing some small things here and there. This is a bad habit as it nullifies the first concept of code that is easy to read because reading more or less the same lines over and over is tedious and it is hard to spot the tiny differences.

A better solution is to package code that we want to reuse several times into a function. A function is a way for us to give a name to a block of code and then, with this name, the code block can be called over and over every time we want it to execute.

In this chapter, you will learn the following:

  • Deciding what goes into a function
  • Writing a function
  • Returning values from a function
  • Passing arguments to...
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