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Daniel Swan
18,227 PointsWhy "Hello World"?
Just curious, how did the phrase "Hello World" become so universal in basic programming? Is there a story behind this or did it just catch on?
4 Answers
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherI was just reading about this recently! The Wikipedia page has a good summary of its origin, although it doesn't say why the author chose that phrase specifically:
The first known instance of the usage of the words "hello" and "world" together in computer literature occurred earlier, in Kernighan's 1972 Tutorial Introduction to the Language B,[1] with the following code:
main( ) {
extrn a, b, c;
putchar(a); putchar(b); putchar(c); putchar('!*n');
}
a 'hell';
b 'o, w';
c 'orld';
The practice was later popularized in the seminal book The C Programming Language.
Andrew Chalkley
Treehouse Guest TeacherI like to think it's like the computer is becoming sentient and it's saying hello to the world it's found itself in.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse Teacher@Andrew, is that how you greeted this world when you found yourself in it?