Tip calculator | Codecademy walkthrough E03
Tip calculator | Codecademy walkthrough E03
Going over the Tip calculator project.
This is episode 3 of the Codecademy walkthrough series, where we work through the Tip calculator project. This tutorial covers the basics of building a simple tip calculator as part of learning programming fundamentals.
The Project
The Tip Calculator is one of the first practical projects in the Codecademy Python course. It combines several concepts learned in previous episodes:
- Variables - Storing the meal cost, tax rate, and tip percentage
- Mathematical operations - Calculating totals and percentages
- User input - Getting values from the user
- Output formatting - Displaying the results in a readable format
What You'll Learn
Building a tip calculator teaches you:
1. Working with numbers - Both integers and floating-point numbers for currency calculations
2. Basic arithmetic - Addition, multiplication, and percentage calculations
3. Variable assignment - Storing intermediate results
4. Practical programming - Creating something useful from basic concepts
The Calculation
A typical tip calculator needs to:
1. Take the meal cost as input
2. Calculate the tax amount
3. Calculate the tip amount
4. Add everything together for the total bill
Why Start with Projects?
Projects like the tip calculator are important because they show you how individual programming concepts come together to solve real problems. It's one thing to learn about variables and math operators in isolation; it's another to use them together to build something practical.