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Why “Hello, World” is the first program for beginners?


Almost anyone who has ever tried to learn a programming language has written – “Hello, World” program as their first task. Not only programmers but also persons working with a markup language like HTML have used “Hello, World” as their first task. Many times, we’ve thought the reason but never got to the root.

Traditionally, “Hello, World” programs are used to give a glimpse of minimal coding syntax required to achieve simple tasks like printing text on screen or console. "Hello, World" acts as a basic check for setup for those who used the language for the first time, it makes sure the framework/compiler/interpreter is properly installed and the user can continue to work. For a complete beginner running the first task like “Hello, World” can act as an Icebreaker. Printing text is still the most common method of debugging errors.

Now we got the reason for running a simple task like printing text on the console as the first task, but why only “Hello, World” is used as the sample text for the first text? Well, "Hello, World" is acting as a greeting to the world of coding of that language. There are already people working with the language and they form a world, when you’re starting for the first time you are giving a greeting to that world of people as you’re entering into that world for the first time, same as we give greeting to new people in a room.

Above all, “Hello, World” is simple. That’s why it is so often used as a barometer of program success. If Hello World does not work effectively within the framework, then it is likely that other, more complex programs will also fail. This two-word phrase has big implications for the field of computer science. With “Hello, World” as a foundation, novice programmers can easily understand computer science principles or elements. And professionals with years of coding experience can use it to learn how a given programming language works, especially in terms of structure and syntax. With applications at all skill levels and in almost every language, there is a long history behind such a short program.

Hackers also use “Hello, World” as a proof of concept that arbitrary code can be executed in that part through an exploit where system programmer does not intent code to be executed. One more popular use of “Hello, World” is as a basis of comparison. Programmers can compare the size of the executable achieving the same task.

Here’s what “Hello, World” look like in some the most popular programming languages currently in use –

Java

class HelloWorld {
              
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello, world!");
}}

Python

print("Hello, world!")

Bash

echo "Hello, World"

C++

	
#include 
int main()
{
    std::cout << "Hello, world!";
    return 0;
}
                

C


#include 
int main(void)
{
	puts("Hello, world!");
}

                                    

JavaScript

document.write('Hello, world!');

Processing

void setup(){ println("Hello, world!"); }

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Sources / References [If Any] : Internet