Variables

Enemy 1 of 5

A variable is a name that holds a value, like a labeled container you can refer back to later. Instead of retyping the same value everywhere it's needed, you store it once under a name and reuse the name — which becomes essential once a program is juggling more than a couple of values.

You make one with let: the keyword let, then the name, an equals sign, and the value. It helps to read = as "gets set to" rather than the math meaning of "equals" — here it's an action (store this value under this name), not a statement that both sides are permanently identical.

Once a value is stored, you can use the name anywhere instead of repeating the value — and, since it's declared with let, you can also assign a new value to it later on and the variable will simply hold whatever was assigned most recently.