# Return value of \`begin ... end\`

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/return-value-of-begin-end/127010>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** question, syntax\
**Created:** [March 16, 2025, 1:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/return-value-of-begin-end/127010 "2025-03-16T13:53:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![StefanKarpinski](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stefankarpinski/32/24_2.png) [@StefanKarpinski](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/StefanKarpinski)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2025, 2:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/return-value-of-begin-end/127010/15 "2025-03-17T14:09:38Z")

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Julia, like Lisp (and most functional programming languages), is an [expression-oriented language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression-oriented_programming_language) and doesn’t have statements. You’ll note that in Python, assignment is a statement. But then they eventually felt compelled to add the `:=` operator just so that you can do an assignment that is an expression. Of course, why have assignment be a statement in the first place? So that you can’t accidentally do `if x = 123` and have it evaluate to true. But Julia doesn’t have truthiness, which is a [fundamentally broken concept](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/on-the-arbitrariness-of-truth-iness/81381), so this isn’t a big issue in the first place.

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