In the last two Tech Tuesdays we have learned about how functions let us define new words in a programming language and how arguments and other local variables are restricted to the scope of the function. Today we will take another look at arguments and how exactly information is passed into the function. Then Tech Tuesday will take the rest of the summer off and resume after Labor Day as I will take my usual late August break from blogging. To motivate today’s discussion take a look at the f...

In the last two Tech Tuesdays we have learned about how functions let us define new words in a programming language and how arguments and other local variables are restricted to the scope of the function. Today we will take another look at arguments and how exactly information is passed into the function. Then Tech Tuesday will take the rest of the summer off and resume after Labor Day as I will take my usual late August break from blogging. To motivate today’s discussion take a look at the f...

Last Tech Tuesday we learned about functions as a way to define our own words in a programming language. We saw that functions take arguments and return results back to where the function was used in the program. We refer to this transfer of control of program execution from the current code to the code inside the function as a function call or a function invocation (the function is called or invoked). As promised at the end of that post, today we will take a closer look at how the arguments ...

Last Tech Tuesday we learned about functions as a way to define our own words in a programming language. We saw that functions take arguments and return results back to where the function was used in the program. We refer to this transfer of control of program execution from the current code to the code inside the function as a function call or a function invocation (the function is called or invoked). As promised at the end of that post, today we will take a closer look at how the arguments ...

In the last two posts we looked at control structures as part of the programming series here on Tech Tuesdays. We saw that loops let us repeat a sequence of instructions, which is one way of having to avoid writing the same code over and over again. Today we will learn about another and more powerful technique: the definition of new words that can then be used anywhere in the program. You may recall the example of nautical terms from the post on programming languages:For instance, if I tell a...

In the last two posts we looked at control structures as part of the programming series here on Tech Tuesdays. We saw that loops let us repeat a sequence of instructions, which is one way of having to avoid writing the same code over and over again. Today we will learn about another and more powerful technique: the definition of new words that can then be used anywhere in the program. You may recall the example of nautical terms from the post on programming languages:For instance, if I tell a...