Learning about functions and events

In programming, a function is a repeatably callable code block, typically designed to accomplish a single task. Functions are important for abbreviating common jobs being done and help reduce the amount of redundancy within your programs. In this section, you will learn different ways to format functions, as well as when you should be using them.

Functions in programming

We primarily use functions to define code that can be easily referenced and executed repeatedly. For the sake of terminology, many programming languages distinguish functions from procedures or subroutines; the difference here is that a function executes code to compute some data that is returned, whereas a procedure simply accomplishes a task without returning a value to where it was called. The following function has been designed to create a new table and fill it with fruits, vegetables, or a non-produce item based on a randomly generated value. See that the function...