3.3 Control Structures

Imagine you're giving instructions to a friend, but you want them to do different things based on certain conditions. For example: "If it's raining, take an umbrella. Otherwise, wear a hat." Or, "Keep walking until you reach the park."

In programming, Control Structures are special instructions that tell the computer how to control the flow of your program's execution. They decide when certain parts of your code should run, how many times they should run, or if they should run at all.

Without control structures, a program would just run all its instructions from top to bottom, one after another, every single time. Control structures give your programs "brains" to make decisions and repeat actions, making them much more powerful and useful!

There are two main types of control structures:

Conditional Statements: For making decisions (like "if this, then that").
Looping Constructs: For repeating actions (like "do this many times" or "do this until something happens").