There are two primary ways that a microcontroller (like the Arduino) can respond to changes in its inputs. One is by polling, the other is by interrupts.

In a polling setup, the mircocontoller explicitly examines all its input sources during its main loop to see what state each one is in and then it responds accordingly. In an interrupt scheme, the microcontroller does essentially nothing in its main loop and gets instructed to do something when an input source jostles it into action.

Of the two, polling is probably easier to get started with. Following is a simple example of using polling.

This example uses polling to determine the state of a switch. If the switch is pressed, Arduino will turn an LED on. If it is not pressed, it will turn the LED off.

digitalWrite(pushButtonPin, HIGH);  // turn on pullup resistors

LightSwitch.ino

/*
 LightSwitch
 Turn an LED on and off.
 */
 
int pushButtonPin = 2;  // connect the push button to digital pin 2
int ledPin = 13;        // connect the LED to pin 13
 
void setup() {
  pinMode(pushButtonPin, INPUT);  // make the pushbutton's pin an input
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);        // make LED's pin an output
}
 
void loop() {
  int buttonState = digitalRead(pushButtonPin);  // read the input pin
 
  // set LED state accordingly
  if (buttonState == LOW)        // if the button is pushed
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);  // turn the LED on
  else                           // otherwise
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);   // turn the LED off
 
  //delay(1);        // delay in between reads for stability (?)
}

Notice the use of an if-else statement. The if-else statement is an example of flow control.

A more compact version of the above that eliminates the if-else statement:

LightSwitch2.ino

/*
 LightSwitch2
 Turn an LED on and off.
 */
 
int pushButtonPin = 2;  // connect the push button to digital pin 2
int ledPin = 13;        // connect the LED to pin 13
 
void setup() {
  pinMode(pushButtonPin, INPUT);  // make the pushbutton's pin an input
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);        // make LED's pin an output
}
 
void loop() {
  int buttonState = digitalRead(pushButtonPin);  // read the input pin
  digitalWrite(ledPin, !buttonState);          // turn the LED on or off
  //delay(1);        // delay in between reads for stability (?)
}

And an even more compact version:

LightSwitch3.ino

/*
 LightSwitch3
 Turn an LED on and off.
 */
 
int pushButtonPin = 2;  // connect the push button to digital pin 2
int ledPin = 13;        // connect the LED to pin 13
 
void setup() {
  pinMode(pushButtonPin, INPUT);  // make the pushbutton's pin an input
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);        // make LED's pin an output
}
 
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(ledPin, !digitalRead(pushButtonPin));  // read the input pin and turn the LED on or off
  //delay(1);        // delay in between reads for stability (?)
}