Let’s look at the syntax of how to declare a variable in Scala.

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Now, let’s map the syntax to actual code in Scala.

In the code above, we are declaring a variable with the name myFirstScalaVariable. myFirstScalaVariable can store data of type Int and is assigned an initial value of

5

5

. It is an immutable variable because we chose the keyword val.

As stated above, when declaring a variable, we need to define its type of data and set an initial value. However, in Scala, we also need to define the type of variable by mentioning a keyword.

But what are keywords and how do we choose the right one for our variable?