How Python executes code - Try It Yourself

Understanding How Python Executes Code

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are writing a simple program to calculate the total cost of items you want to buy. You will see how Python reads and runs your code step by step.

🎯 Goal: You will create a small program that stores item prices, adds them up, and shows the total cost. This will help you understand how Python executes code line by line.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with item names and their prices

Create a variable to hold the total cost starting at 0

Use a for loop to add each item's price to the total cost

Print the total cost

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Calculating totals is common in shopping apps, budgeting tools, and billing systems.

💼 Career

Understanding how Python executes code helps you write clear programs and debug errors in real projects.

1

Create a dictionary of items and prices

Create a dictionary called items with these exact entries: 'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'orange': 0.7

Python

# Create the dictionary called items with the given entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary. Separate each item with a comma.

2

Create a variable to hold the total cost

Create a variable called total_cost and set it to 0

Python

items = {'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'orange': 0.7}
# Create the variable total_cost and set it to 0
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just write total_cost = 0 to start counting from zero.

3

Add each item's price to the total cost

Use a for loop with variables item and price to iterate over items.items(). Inside the loop, add price to total_cost

Python

items = {'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'orange': 0.7}
total_cost = 0
# Use a for loop to add each price to total_cost
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use for item, price in items.items(): to get each price, then add it to total_cost using +=.

4

Print the total cost

Write print(total_cost) to display the total cost

Python

items = {'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'orange': 0.7}
total_cost = 0
for item, price in items.items():
    total_cost += price
# Print the total_cost
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(total_cost) to show the final sum.