12 February 20021

What is coming?

Kris Jordan explaining how git works.

We will study boss statements, which are grammatically incomplete clauses that alter the flow of a program's control. So far, the programs we can write have steps that run in seriatum. We will now break this.

Every Python statement you have seen so far is a grammatically complete sentence. Here are two examples.

x = 5    Make x point a 5.
5 + 6    Evaluate 5 + 6

Now check this out.

Conditional Logic

if x == 5:    if x equals 5,   This is a boss statement
               Boss statements end in a colon.

Here we give the boss statement a block of code and it becomes
a complete sentence.  Conditional logic has several boss statements.

if x == 5:
    print("x is five.")    This is a block.  

Functions This is a function. It's how we remember a procedure under a name. The return keyword specifies the function's output.

def f(x):           To define f(x),
    return x*x
print(f(6))

Iteration This is a loop. It continues to execute as long as x does not equal 2.

while(x != 2):
    print("......")
    x += 1

In this next chapter we will learn how to use these tools and we become turing-complte, capable of solving any computing problem given enough time and memory.