What are statements in programming?

Statements in programming refer to the instructions that are used to perform specific actions or tasks within the code. Each statement represents a single operation to be executed by the programming language's interpreter or compiler. By utilizing statements, a programmer can manipulate data, control the flow of execution, and ultimately achieve the desired outcomes of the program.

For example, a simple statement in a programming language could be an assignment statement like x = 5, which assigns the value 5 to the variable x. Similarly, statements can include control structures like loops and conditionals that dictate how the program behaves depending on certain conditions.

The other options address aspects of programming but do not define what statements are. General principles of software design pertain to high-level guidelines for designing software rather than individual operations. Tools to debug code assist in finding errors and issues rather than being part of the code itself. Comments are indeed important, but they serve to explain the code to human readers and do not perform actions during execution. Therefore, the correct understanding of programming statements is that they are fundamental instructions that execute actions within the code.