/*Variables-our friends in the age of repetition
Variables are placeholders which allow programs to easily recall
information or actions, alter them, and implement complex operations
in a clear concise manner. They can be thought of as containers for
holding values of any data type including numbers, strings, booleans,
and even functions or objects.
*/

/*declaring a variable called num1 with "var" keyword
this simply creates a place in memory which can then be assigned to
hold a value in the future. Variables declared in the "global scope" or
outside of a function are stored in the global "window" object and
useable throughout the program.
*/
"use strict";

var num1;
console.log(num1);//will log "undefined"

/*variables that have not yet been assigned a value are set to
undefined by javascript, it is bad practice to set a value to
undefined yourself although completely possible as it makes
debugging and searching out errors more difficult
*/

//assigning a value to the variable "num1" using the "=" assignment
//operator.

num1 = 10;
console.log(num1);//will log 10

num1 += 10;
console.log(num1);//will log 20 after altering the numeric value

//changing the value of a variable
num1 = "ten";
console.log(num1);//here the value is completely changed to a string
                  // this will log "ten"

//variables can be changed from numbers to strings or other data
// types quickly and easily, and their assigned values will called up
// in the context of their scope.

/*
In addition to using variables as containers, we can also call utilize
"constants" and "lets" to hold values, these too can accept any data type
but they behave a bit differently than variables.
*/

//testing testing