Python equips us with many different ways to store data. A float is a different kind of number from an int, and we store different data in a list than we do in a dict. These are known as different types. We can check the type of a Python variable using the type() function.

a_string = "Cool String"
an_int = 12

print(type(a_string))
# prints "<class 'str'>"

print(type(an_int))
# prints "<class 'int'>"

Above, we defined two variables, and checked the type of these two variables. A variable’s type determines what you can do with it and how you can use it. You can’t .get() something from an integer, just as you can’t add two dictionaries together using +. This is because those operations are defined at the type level.