# Types

# What Are types?

Java is a statically typed langauge. This means that we have to work with types. Types are how we tell Java what something is or returns.
In variables, we looked at this example:

boolean isRobotOn = false;

Here, we tell java what the data that the variable contains is. In this case, the variable isRobotOn is of type boolean.

In functions, we looked at this example:

int addTwoNumbers(int a, int b) {
    return a + b;
}

In this example, we tell Java what this function will return, this allows us to guarantee* that we will get a return value of type int. This allows has the side effect of being able to use Code Completion on a lot more objects and variables that we would be able to otherwise.
* This is true for about 99% of cases

# Primitives

So far, all the types we have been looking at have been primitives. A primitive is a type that Java supplies us by default. You can tell which types are primitives as primitives always start with a lowercase.
Here are some primitives:

Name	Meaning
`int`	Integers (1, 2, 3, etc.)
`byte`	A number from 0 to 255
`short`	A number from -32768 to 32767
`long`	A number from -2147483648 to 2147483647
`float`	A fracional number that goes up to 7 decimal places (1.234, etc.)
`double`	A fracional number that goes up to 15 decimal places
`boolean`	A true or false value
`char`	A single character

# Other Types

So far, we have only looked at primitives, but Java has more to offer then that! We are going to look at non-primitive data types. You can tell if a type is not a primitive if it starts with an uppercase.

For example:

MyType myVariable = new MyType();

How do we create types? Its super simple! We simply use the class name of the class we are instantiating as the type.
For more information about instantiating classes, check out classes.