Calculator for basic arithmetic operations

Question

Second day coding so I'm new to this. I have made this simple calculator but I repeat the code in order to use the previous answer in the next calculation. I've been trying to simplify it but I can't seem to figure it out. Whatever I try breaks the code. Any feed back helps. Here is the code

# Beginning calculator code
first_number = "a"
second_number = ""
carry_number = ""
operation = ""
while first_number == "a":
 first_number = float(input("Enter your first number: "))
 operation = input("You can enter c to exit calculator \nWhat operation? ")
 second_number = float(input("What is your second number? "))
 if operation == "+":
 carry_number = (first_number + second_number)
 elif operation == "-":
 carry_number = (first_number - second_number)
 elif operation == "/":
 carry_number = (first_number / second_number)
 elif operation == "*":
 carry_number = (first_number * second_number)
 print(first_number, operation, second_number, "=", carry_number)
 first_number = carry_number
while True:
 operation = input("You can enter c to exit calculator \nWhat operation? ")
 if operation == "c":
 quit()
 second_number = float(input("What is your second number? "))
 if operation == "+":
 carry_number = (first_number + second_number)
 elif operation == "-":
 carry_number = (first_number - second_number)
 elif operation == "/":
 carry_number = (first_number / second_number)
 elif operation == "*":
 carry_number = (first_number * second_number)
 print(first_number, operation, second_number, "=", carry_number)
 first_number = carry_number

• Reinderien: Welcome and thanks for joining CodeReview! I hope that you get some good feedback; this is a great first question.

Answer 1

• Notice that you have a bunch of repeated code; let's reduce this
• There's no need to pre-initialize your variables in the first five lines of your code
• Your first while loop doesn't deserve to exist; the condition is only evaluated True once
• No need to surround your operations in parens

There's a lot of other things you could do to improve this, but without getting too advanced, you could write this to be as simple as

# Beginning calculator code
first_number = float(input('Enter your first number: '))
while True:
 print('You can enter c to exit calculator')
 operation = input('What operation? ')
 if operation == 'c':
 quit()
 
 second_number = float(input('What is your second number? '))
 if operation == '+':
 carry_number = first_number + second_number
 elif operation == '-':
 carry_number = first_number - second_number
 elif operation == '/':
 carry_number = first_number / second_number
 elif operation == '*':
 carry_number = first_number * second_number
 print(first_number, operation, second_number, '=', carry_number)
 first_number = carry_number

• crazyrocky: First off thank you for the explanation. It made sense to me right away when you wrote it like that. So when you said I don't need to pre-initialize the variables you meant the lines that I wrote "first number = second number = etc..". The program automatically can keep track of the values?
• Reinderien: Lines like first_number = "a" that get overwritten before they're read.