Programming Basics - Data Types

Understanding Data Types

In any programming language, data types are important as they define the type of data that a variable can hold.
A variable can be imagined as a storage location or a box in a computer’s memory where you store some data.

Integer: Used for numbers without decimal points. For instance, 5, 20, 300 are representations of integer data type.
Float: Used for numbers with decimal points. For instance, 1.01, 3.14, 20.5 are float numbers.
Boolean: Can represent one of two states: True or False. It’s used when a variable can have only one of two possible values.
Strings: Used to define textual data. Anything written within either double or single quotes is considered a string in most programming languages.
Character: Used for single alphabets or numbers. For instance, ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘1’, ‘2’ are characters.

In some languages, the data type of a variable is set once and cannot be changed later on. Such languages are called static languages.
In some other languages, however, the data types of a variable can be changed throughout the program, these are called dynamic languages.

Efficiency: Choosing the appropriate data type can lead to more efficient program execution. For example, if you want to store a number within the range of -128 to 127, using an integer (which can hold much larger numbers) can be wasteful – a byte data type would be sufficient.
Precision: For example, to store a real number, if a float is used instead of a double, precision could be lost as a double has a larger range and can be more precise.

The process of converting one data type into another is known as type conversion.
It can be either implicit (performed by the compiler automatically) or explicit (performed by the programmer using casting methods). For example, you might need to convert an integer variable to a float for certain calculations.

A constant is similar to a variable, but its value is set at the time of declaration and cannot be changed during the execution of the program.
Constants are useful for values that repeat in the code, and you don’t want them accidentally changed.