Why We Need More Hello World Programs

Ahh who doesn’t love Hello World.

I still remember the day that I wrote my first Hello World Program, or any program of sorts. It was in C++ while watching the New Boston. Ohh god I was fillled with happiness beyond measure. Programming you had me at Hello World.

Questions

But it all ended after a couple of days when I thought to myself, What did I really achieve , was the world a better place because of the ‘Hello World’ printing code that I had written. Proabably not, and never will but then what is the point.

This is the question that I hear often discussed in forums, and in the Youtube comment section. There is always that one guy/gal who always brings up the issue. You just created the same program as the one the guy teaching you created, where is the originality? What have you learnt.

Answers

The world did not benefit from you writing one more HW program. The world did not gain by you creating one more compiler, one more OS, one more database that is both stupid and would never see the light of the day.

The world did not benefit from you creating a new Assembly language parser exactly as the one described by the tutorial. Then what did the world really gain then?

The world gained another person who can write a Hello World Program, another person who could write an Interpeter and another who can write an OS. The world is richer for the fact that there is one more person who understands the inner workings of the tech he is using.

The world gained in net intellect, if I may. This is the blessing of learning. It is not about the stupid thing that you created, but the person you had to become to create that thing.

So in short, go and build things that’s the only way to learn even though the thing you created will never be used, the world would be better off with one more person who can build things.

If you are all hyped up, here’s something https://github.com/danistefanovic/build-your-own-x

Originally published on https://medium.com/@aswinmohanme/why-we-need-more-hello-world-programs-9442442d9aee.