What actually "Hello World" means

Hi, I find “Hello World” everywhere, frameworks, learning platforms, modules, themes,

what exactly it means, what is the importance and how I can utilize it.

can you define in easy to understand way without posting a link?

I think MicroSoft came up with it.
It is just to test you can write a program in that language.

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Literally? It’s your way of announcing to the world that you exist (or your app is announcing to the world that it exists).

Idiomatically? It’s used in computer science to demonstrate the most basic functionality of a language (usually by displaying it in some context, such as a console or a GUI element).

Historically? See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/“Hello,_World!”_program#History

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My friend has the original (known) C “Hello World” program tattooed on her thigh.

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Pfft, that’s nothing. I have the Brainfuck “Hello World” tattooed on my brain.

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“Hello, World” – with comma :slight_smile:

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Exactly, there are lot of IT thing which drives me into comma :joy:

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I think it’s just a simple test to make sure that the whole compile/build/make process is working.

If you can turn a simple text source code into a working executable, then you know everything is working.

In a microprocessor world, a blinking LED is the equivalent of Hello World… turn source code into binary, upload/burn to the EEPROM, and see if the microprocessor executes your program, i.e. blink the LED. Again, just a quick test that the whole source/build/upload sequence works.

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Sorry if this is over kill. My bad.

The “Hello World” is a simple first coding program ‘explanation’ for new programmers utilized in many different programming languages. In computer talk, the “Hello World” is a string literal; meaning - by using the double quotes you are telling the computer - this is a ’ string of characters’ ; the characters being - Hello World - which the user (you) typed in and are then read from left-to-right inside the programming languages run-time execution. During the computer run-time (execution) [when you hit the ENTER key] a builtin function named (already coded behind the scenes for you to use) the print() function; as in, print(“Hello World”), uses the single parameter - Hello World - inside the parentheses. Depending on the Computer language you are using C, C++, Java, Python, etc,., the print() function outputs the - Hello World - to your computers’ screen on a single line. Eureka ! Your first program has successfully run. It is a passing ritual for most newbies. I remember when I wrote mine. :smile:

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Thank you, I am learning even fast by interacting with experts.

thanks @fullthrottlecoder and all

It has no meaning, it has simply become tradition.

Much like the use of foo and bar as placeholder variable names.

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It’s one of those revered programmer traditions, like sticking easter eggs in apps, cute mascots for open source projects or coming up with 5000 different ways to solve the fizzbuzz challenge!

@ibnhabib I think it’s the simplest way to get you to see what you have created and how it will look like to everyone on the other side viewing your code.

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Microsoft didn’t come up with it. It was initially made famous in Kernighan & Ritchie’s book “The C Programming Language” back in 1978 as a simple first program to demonstrate the absolute basics of programming to new coders. Since then, it’s become tradition for every programming language to start off by demonstrating itself using a “Hello, world” type program.

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