A data type at its simplest form is information for the computer to know how to understand what to do with data. It’s like a little note for a variable to tell the computer, “hey, this is a number, so we want to do certain operations on this data like adding and subtracting!”

What does that mean? Let's say we have a variable (just some place to store data) called x and we give it a value of 1. As humans, we know that 1 is a number, and we know we can do certain things with numbers like add 1, remove 1, etc. We know that we can't do 1 minus "hello world", that just doesn't make sense... similarly for computers, if we attempt the same thing, we can expect problems.

There are different data types for different classifications of data, like numbers, timestamps, lists, etc.

Where necessary, it’s important to associate data with the respective data type. Note that some languages, like JavaScript or Python, are implicitly typed, meaning the types of variables are determined while your program is running, instead of you needing to specify the types explicitly.

This post aims to explain what common data types are used, what their purpose is, and when it’s appropriate to use them.

Explanation of common data types

Integer int

An integer is a whole, positive or negative number. If you have data represented as a single number without any decimals or characters, this is the data type you want. In some languages, there’s a separate float (also known as double) type to handle “floating point numbers” which are numbers with decimal places, like 1.5 or 3.1415.

String string and char

A string is a sequence of the char data type which represents a single character like “a”. Some languages don’t have the char data type, but a string can essentially be defined as any piece of text (usually denoted by quotation marks ””). “Hello world” is a piece of text, and therefore a string.

Here’s an example of why differentiating between data types is important; if you store a number as a string like this:

1let a = "1"

You won’t be able to perform any numerical or mathematical operations on a like adding/subtracting 1.

Most languages won’t accept this, but in JavaScript, the specification says to handle cases of mixed data types by automatically converting the incompatible data types to something appropriate to avoid an error:

1console.log("1" + 1) // "11"

The result isn’t always what is expected however, so if you want to store something like a player’s score, where you know you’ll want to add or subtract, you’ll want to use an integer or floating point number.

On the other hand, if you simply want to store something like a user’s identifier for your app, even if it’s all numbers (like 615253717252528..), it might be wise to store this and other examples as a string. Storing a number with a lot of digits as shown before can result in rounding problems, and if you don’t intend to do any mathematical operations on this data, it might be easier to work with.

Boolean boolean

The boolean data type represents a value that has one of two possible values, those being either true or false. Some languages represent this as YES/NO or sometimes as integers (1/0). These are used in expressions to assert if a condition is true or false:

1if (variable === true) {

An example of using booleans is tracking whether a lightbulb is on or off, where the “on” state is true and the “off” state is false. You can use a boolean value stored in a variable to control the state of your program by asking questions using if statements.

Array array

An array is a data type that contains a collection of elements (this could be numbers, text, anything), attributed with a number representing what position in the list the element is in (indices).

Arrays are typically denoted by square brackets surrounding the elements, with each new item being delimited by a comma.

Getting the value of an element in an array can be done by specifying the value of the index you want to access in the array. An array’s index is 0-based, so accessing the second item in the list can be done by specifying 1 as the index and accessing it like a property:

1const names = ["Blake", "John", "Phil"]
2console.log(standardArray[0]) // "Blake"
3console.log(standardArray[1]) // "John" < (second item)
4console.log(standardArray[2]) // "Phil"

(a rare exception to this is in some languages like Lua, arrays use 1-based indexing, meaning the first element is at index 1)

Arrays typically have a fixed size and can’t be mutated once defined in lower-level languages, but in higher-level languages like JavaScript, all arrays are automatically defined as

. This means that the array can grow dynamically in size, and you can add or remove elements from any index in the array without needing to worry about memory management.

Some languages like Python have lists in conjunction with arrays, so what’s the difference between a list and an array? While they’re very similar in nature, traditional 

are static and continuous, whereas lists can expand and shrink, and are stored dynamically in memory. This means lists can store elements of different data types.

Separately, in weakly-typed languages like JavaScript, it’s possible for the array to have elements of different types: [ 1, "hello", true ] is a valid array in JavaScript, but in a strongly-typed language like C#, you’d have to explicitly define what type all of the elements in the array must match, otherwise there would be problems with figuring out what operations should work depending on the index of the array. JavaScript handles all of this automatically, even if it is at the cost of potential unwanted results. For more information on this, check out

.

You’ll want to use an array when you have repetition or a pattern involved (instead of assigning one variable for each item, an array can store all the items you need in one variable), or just need to store a list of records like a list of employee’s names.

Quick Recap

Whew, that was a lot we covered. This non-exhaustive guide on data types was intended to be language-agnostic so no matter if you’re working high-level or low-level, these rough concepts should still apply to you. But as a quick summary:

integer / int / number = represents a whole, real number without any decimals

float / double = represents a number with decimal point or an exponential part

string / char = char represents a single character, string represents a sequence of characters, used for storing text

boolean / bool = used for conditional testing, can only be in one of two states (true or false), sometimes represented using different values

array = typically stores a fixed-size collection of the same data type