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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

Function arguments

Often, we want our functions to be somewhat flexible, so they don't do exactly the same thing every time we call them. Consider the following two functions:

function add_2_and_3()
    return 2 + 3
end_function
function add_5_and 9()
    return 5 + 9
end_function

These two functions add two numbers and return the result. The first one adds 2 and 3, and the second one does the same but with 5 and 9. Now, these are just two pairs of numbers. If we would like to have a function that could add any numbers, we would need to create an endless number of functions.

But if we look at what the functions do, we can see that they are actually doing the same thing. They add two numbers and return the result. The only thing that changes are the numbers that are used in the addition operation.

What we want is to be able to pass the numbers we want to be added to the function so it can use them in the calculation, and by...

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