Global Variable is not Updating

Question

My global variable is not updating, all it prints out is 0. Why is this happening? Are global variables bad practice?

counter = 0
def count():
    global counter
    print(counter)
    counter += 1
    return counter

if __name__ == "__main__":
    count()

Answer 1

You print it first, and only afterwards change its value. If you move

counter += 1

above the print line, you will see it prints 1.

It will only print this once, not continuously. Since you are not calling count inside a loop of some kind, it will only update and print the result once.