Frozen - Hour of Code Introduction to Functions

One of the most important concepts of computer science,

is how to define new commands;
how to add your own words to the computer language.

Most computer languages have only about a hundred words or commands

and the art is to define your own new words out of these coding blocks.

We do this all the time at sports.

In basketball you learn how to dribble, how to do a lay-up and how to rebound.

Once you've learned these moves,
you learn new moves

and put together these building blocks,
like a pick and roll or give and go

and from there you can do more complex plays.

Once you learned that play and give it a name,
everybody on the team knows how to do it.

Simulary, once you learned a computer how to do an action once,

using these sequence of commands,

you can make up your own name for that action,
so it's easier to repeat it later.

When you define your own command and give it a name,
it's called a function.

If you are programming with blocks,

you can use functions if there is a set of actions
which you are gonna use a lot of times.

For example, you've written code to create a square,

You could define this as a function called "create a square".

Now you have a new block
that you can use multiple times to create multiple squares.

A lot of simple functions can be used,
to create more complex patterns.

In the next puzzle,

the code you recently wrote to make a circle

is available to you as a new function
that can make circles of different sizes.

Can you use it to help Elsa to create a new beautiful pattern in the snow?