what does return do?

Yes Angelus Miculek , you're on the right track!

In Python (and in many other programming languages), the purpose of the return statement is to send a value back to the part of the program that called the function. If a function doesn't return a value, it doesn't send any output back, and the variable calling it would be empty (or None, which is Python's equivalent of "no value").

Here’s an example:

def add_numbers(a, b):
    return a + b  # Returns the sum of a and b

result = add_numbers(3, 4)  # result will store the value 7
print(result)  # This will print 7

In this case, the function add_numbers returns the result of a + b. The variable result stores this returned value. If there were no return statement, result would not store anything useful:

def add_numbers(a, b):
    a + b  # No return statement

result = add_numbers(3, 4)  # result will be None
print(result)  # This will print None

Without return, the function still performs the operation a + b, but it doesn’t send the result back, so the calling code doesn't have access to it. That's why the return statement is crucial when you want a function to pass a result back to the part of the code that called it.

I hope that helps it make sense 😃