Your First Program: print()

Saying hello

The first thing every programmer learns is how to show something on the screen. In Python we use print():

print("Hello, World!")

Output

Hello, World!

Let's break it down:

• print is a function – a built-in command that does a job. Its job is to show things on the screen.
• The round brackets ( ) hold what you want to print.
• The quotes " " tell Python that Hello, World! is text.

Printing several lines

Every print() starts on a new line. Python runs your code from top to bottom, one line at a time:

print("Line one")
print("Line two")
print("Line three")

Output

Line one
Line two
Line three

Printing numbers

Numbers don't need quotes. Python can even do maths before printing:

print(25)
print(10 + 5)
print(3 * 4)

Output

25
15
12

Common mistake: print("10 + 5") prints the text 10 + 5, not 15. Anything inside quotes is treated as plain text.

Printing several things at once

Separate values with commas. Python puts a space between them:

print("I am", 20, "years old")

Output

I am 20 years old

Empty lines

An empty print() prints a blank line, which helps make output easier to read:

print("Top")
print()
print("Bottom")

Output

Top

Bottom

Remember: Python is case-sensitive. print works, but Print or PRINT will give an error.