Write Real Code

For a long time Kavi built programs by dragging coloured blocks. "But real programmers type their code," Kavi said. "They write it as text — words and symbols, one line at a time." So Kavi opened an editor and typed three lines: score = 0, then score = score + 5, then print(score). Kavi pressed Run. The computer read the lines from top to bottom, one at a time, and the screen showed 5. "It really runs!" Kavi hooted. "Each line is an instruction. A variable like score is a named box that holds a value. print shows something on the screen. And I must type it exactly — the right spelling, the right brackets, the right quotes — or it will not run." Writing real code is just this: type clear instructions, in order, and let the computer run them.