7. Values

Programming, at its heart, is about manipulating data. In the world of programming, we often use the term “values” to refer to these pieces of data. A value could be a number, a piece of text, a true or false statement, and many other things.

In C#, when we write a number like 5, a piece of text like "Hello, World!", or a Boolean value like true or false, we’re writing a value. You can think of values as the raw material that our programs work with. The values we write in our programs are called “literals” because their meaning is literally what we write.

In addition to numbers, text, and Boolean values, there’s another kind of value that we need to talk about: null. This value represents the absence of a value. It’s a way of saying “nothing” or “no value.” Here’s a fun fact: the inventor of null, Tony Hoare, has referred to it as his “billion-dollar mistake” because of the numerous errors and crashes it has caused in programs over the years. That said, null is a concept we have to live with in many programming languages, including C#, and therefore it’s crucial to understand.

Console.WriteLine(5);
Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
Console.WriteLine(true);

The below script needs to be able to find the current output cell; this is an easy method to get it.

5

Hello, World!

True

In the code above, 5, "Hello, World!", and true are all literal values. The Console.WriteLine method prints the value we give it to the console.

It’s also worth noting that every value has a type, which determines what kind of data it represents and what operations can be performed on it. We’ll dive deeper into data types in a later chapter. For now, just remember that values are the fundamental pieces of data that our programs manipulate.

In the next chapter, we’ll take a step forward and learn about “variables”, which allow us to store and manipulate these values in more complex ways. Until then, keep exploring!