What is variable, method in Java?

variables are simply pointers to a value you want to keep for later reference or to use for transformation. As I am more of a JavaScript background I will show an example using JavaScript. Let's say you want to set a greeting variable here's how you'd to it with JS

var greeting = "Hello world";

What this mean is that I am declaring a variable by the name of 'greeting' and I am setting it a value of "Hello world". so when I want to show my greeting to the user, I can simply write for example

console.log(greeting); // which would output the string in your browser console saying "Hello world" since you have save the value of "Hello world" in your 'greeting' variable. An equivalent would be : console.log("Hello world"), but then I would have to keep writing "Hello world" over and over again which is not good practice DRY (Don't repeat yourself) is the primordial programming principle.

For methods, think of method as if you had a big old red toolbox. In there, you have a hammer, a screwdriver and a saw. They all have a different function to execute different tasks (screwdriver to screw or unscrew and so on..). If you look back at my variable example, what we are doing to output the greeting variable to the console is reaching through the console object and executing the log task (which has the function of logging a variable into a string to the browser console). To finish with my toolbox metaphor, by using console.log you are likely doing : toolbox.screwdriver("I'm screwed").

I hope this is helping you, I don't program Java so it was hard to show you an example using Java.

P.S : Don't forget to categorize your forum questions with the subject you are resquesting help for as you will get more attention from the Java community within the site :)