Home-made CNC
milling machine producing a Hello World test piece in Perspex. Andy Dingle. 2008

Being that the drums and horns for my very first post and also the main subject for this entry. The fact you can read this, means I’ve succeeded in setting up my account, finished doing the “mandatory” stuff I needed to do before enjoying some time in front of the computer and of course…that I’ve chosen some subject to write about. Truth is that since I had not one single idea coming to my mind after writing “hello world” I remembered I’ve seen this line in my life ever since I was taught to program in pascal when I was in high school. It happens this small sentence has a wide application in teaching programming to pretty much anyone.

// A simple java example

public static void main (String[] args)
{
System.out.println(“Hello World”);
}

Whenever we programmers learn a new language, one of the very first things we try to do is to be able to send a simple text message to the screen (the default output), this not only gives us a good idea of the appropriate syntax for a particular language, but also allows us to verify we didn’t screw up in the installation of the compiler. Although it is not officially known to the world who decided to use this sentence as the output message parameter for the first time, it is believed it was first used in an internal memorandum at bell laboratories by Brian Kernighan in 1974.

Well now you’ve learned something new…or died a bit wasting your time XP. See you soon people.

Oh and before I forget, check out this link to see a huge amount of examples on many programming languages.