W1089 Hello World

Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...

— Merlin, The Coder

The first Hello World Program

Prerequisites

• W1086 Merlin Build System
• W1002 The Client, the Server, and the Shell

Background

A Brief History of the Hello World program:

In the 1970s, Brian Kernighan was a computer scientist at Bell Labs, developing UNIX along with other famous computer scientists such as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, who created the programming language C. In a 1974 internal memo at Bell Labs, Kernighan created the Hello, World program as a simple demonstration of the input/output capabilities of the programming language B. Later, when Kernighan and Ritchie published their first book on C programming, The C Programming Language, the Hello World example found its way in and became instantly famous as a sort of 'first program' to write.

Introduction

A Hello world program is simply a program that prints the text "Hello, World!" or some variation thereof to some kind of output device for the user. It is commonly used as a sample program, and is often the first program taught to students.

Observe

Observe, Ponder, and Journal: : Section 1

1. Why do you think Hello world is typically the first program taught to students?
2. How might the Hello World program be different, depending on the programming language it's written in?

Exercises

Exercises

•  J1089  Create a journal and answer all questions. Be sure to include all sections of the journal, properly formatted.
•  M1089-10  Complete  Merlin Mission Manager  Mission M1089-10.

References

• Brian Kernighan (Wikipedia)
• The C Programming Language (Book) (Wikipedia)
• "Hello, World!" Program (Wikipedia)