The type of a variable defines what kinds of values the variable can hold. These are the basic types in Java: `int` -- represents integer (whole number) values like 1, 0, -19, 334, etc `double` -- represents real numbers decimal values like 3.40, 0.0, -12.2214, etc `boolean` -- represents a true or false statement, can only hold the values `true` or `false` `char` -- represents a single character like 'a', 'F', ';', etc `String` -- represents strings of characters like "Hello", "how are you doing", etc So an `int` variable can only hold integer values, a `boolean` variable can only hold true or false, etc.
