The Power of Loops

In coding, we often want our characters (called sprites) to do the same thing over and over. Think about walking: you lift your left foot, then your right foot, then your left again. This is a pattern. If you want to draw a square, you move forward and turn right. You do this exactly 4 times. Instead of dragging 8 different blocks into your workspace, you can use a loop to tell the computer to do that pattern for you!

The Repeat block is like a hungry mouth that eats other blocks! Anything you put inside the mouth of the repeat block will happen again and again. The number you type into the block tells the computer exactly how many times to run that code. If you want a sprite to blink $10$ times, you just put the 'Hide' and 'Show' blocks inside a repeat block set to $10$. This makes your code much cleaner and easier to read.

Using loops is a sign of a great programmer. We call this being efficient. Loops are better for three reasons: 1. Speed: It is much faster to change one number than to delete 50 blocks. 2. Accuracy: You are less likely to make a mistake if you only write the code once. 3. Readability: Other people can understand your code quickly. If you see a 'Repeat 100' block, you know exactly what is happening without counting 100 individual lines!