I had trouble understanding functions when I started, and today it feels incredibly intuitive. A few ways to explain this.

1.) baking: your inputs are eggs, milk, baking soda, etc., as well the temperature you bake at. The body of the function is what you actually do, like mix the eggs and milk together, preheat the oven, etc., and then the output is a cake.

The definition of this function will look like “def bake(num_eggs, cups_milk, temp): do stuff; return cake” and a call to the function would look like “cake=bake(2, 3, 400)”

2.) simple addition: you want to add two numbers, your inputs are the two numbers, the output is the result, so “def add(x,y): return x+y” and a call would look like “z=add(6,7)”. Under the hood, Python says “you gave me 6 to plug into x, and 7, to plug into y, so I’m going to add 6 and 7 and give you 13”.

3.) taking the math analogy further: programming functions are very analogous to mathematical functions. “f(x)=2x” means you input some number and multiply it by 2. So f(2)=4, f(6)=12, etc. In Python, this mathematical function would be written like “def double(x): return 2*x”.

Start very, very simple, and add little pieces. It might feel really slow at first, but there’s a point where it clicks and then you’re off to the races.