Composition

So far, we have looked at the elements of a program - variables, expressions, and statements- in isolation, without talking about how to combine them.

One of the most useful features of programming languages is their ability to take small building blocks and compose them. For example, the argument of a function can be any kind of expression, including arithmetic operators:

x = math.sin(degrees / 360.0 * 2 * math.pi)

And even function calls:

x = math.exp(math.log(x+1))

Almost anywhere you can put a value, you can put an arbitrary expression, with one exception: the left side of an assignment statement has to be a variable name. Any other expression on the left side is a syntax error (We will see exceptions to this rule later).

hours = 2 # correct 
minutes = hours * 60 # correct 
hours * 2 = minutes # wrong SyntaxError: can't assign to operator