refers to the type of data that will be placed in a named memory location (also known as a variable). examples are real, integer, and string.
a specific type of data that can be used in a programming language. in alice the data types that we used most often included number, boolean, and object.
in java, every variable has a type declared in the source code. there are two kinds of types: reference types and primitive types. reference types are references to objects.