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Talk:"Hello, World!" program/Archive 1

"To run:" recipes unneccessary
Should all this "to run:" crap really be in the 'Hello world program' article? We don't seriously expect everybody to have a GNU/Linux system with complete development environment installed. --Jizzbug

 * You mean posix environment? Well, it is the official standard. ;-) Kim Bruning 22:03, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

XHTML Warning
The following notice was attached to the XHTML example:

Please note that this document must also be sent with the appropriate HTTP Header, most preferably "application/xhtml+xml", but it MAY also be sent as "application/xml" or "text/xml"; however it MUST NOT be sent as "text/html"; see XHTML Media Types for further info.

I removed this, as on http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#text-html (the section just above the one referenced), there is a backward compatibility clause that renders it unnecessary to make any relevant point here. This also matches my experience with 100's of XHTML documents on web servers and various browsers. --Nigelj 20:19, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Indeed, I would have to agree - while it is technically correct to use that doctype, it's going a bit far to impose it upon everyone when text/html is set so rigidly into some systems that it may never change... -[Unknown] 21:13, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

 * That clause is applicable to XHTML 1.0, not 1.1. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the W3C, upon realizing the error of their ways, removed the backwards-compatibility section. It goes totally against the whole idea of using XML instead of SGML. If you limit yourself to being backwards-compatible with HTML 4.01, why not just use it? There is a great page describing all the problems with XHTML being sent as text/html at Web Devout –Wulf 20:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello world tradition (BCPL)
The tradition of using "Hello world!" as the test message was probably started by its use as an example program in the book The C Programming Language, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

 * I think so too, but somone (not me!) on the BCPL page claims it started in BCPL. --drj

 * (ext lk) http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bintro.html

 * In 1997, Dennis Ritchie says: 'so far as Brian and I can remember, the Tutorial contains the first instance of a "Hello, world" program.' The Tutorial in question is (ext lk) http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/btut.html . It is for the B programming language, and was published internally at Bell Labs in January 1973. The program could be even older (the Unix people had switched to C for almost everything by then; the heyday of B on Unix was perhaps 1970-71). But January 1973 is the earliest surviving evidence. This is a few years before "The C Programming Language" book, and obviously a precursor to it, since the same people are involved.

 * It would be interesting to hear more details of the BCPL claim. BCPL is the main inspiration for B, so it is possible someone doing B had seen the hello world in BCPL and "translated" it. Ritchie and Kernighan 24 years later would not necessarily remember this. On the other hand, it is possible some later reporter heard that hello world was invented in B and misreported this as BCPL. We need more details of the BCPL claim, preferably including a date.

Java Swing example
The Java Swing example is excessively long. It should only be a half-dozen lines longer than the console example. Ed Poor

 * Good point. I'll put up a more reasonable one.  The other option is to not have a GUI one at all, but I'll probabl lose that argument. --LDC

IMO i think it should be the most basic way of doing hello world, without any fancyness such as a gui, so yes, put the CLI one there. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:43, 2004 May 5 (UTC)

"Evolution of a Programmer" joke
Would it be terribly off topic to include all the "Hello world!" examples from the old Evolution of a Programmer joke, possibly as a subpage? I don't want to go to the trouble of looking it up and copying it if it's just going to get deleted as off-topic.
 * It's really not on topic, so someone will likely remove it. --Stephen Gilbert

Java GUI example
The "Java GUI" example seems excessively long. Did someone put that in there on purpose, to make the point that Java is a verbose language? I put in a 5-line Java applet example in rebuttal, if that was their purpose. -- User:Ed Poor

 * I put that one in, and for the same reason: whoever put in the original "Java GUI" example put in one that was three times as long, made it look like Java GUI programming is a real mess. I shortened it down to the current version, which really is about as small as you can get a standalone Java GUI appication.  Of course applets can be even smaller, because they aren't standalone--they depend on an enclosing application.  --Lee Daniel Crocker

 * The 6502 (comparably simple system) example too depends on an "enclosing application": the "KERNAL ROM" whose charoutput subroutine is called. Similarly a java applet with just a paint function would establish a hello world GUI example. If one is very picky, the according .html file got to be listed because it defines the size of the display. But on the other hand, other examples to might need "make" (or such) files that the reader would need to really get the hello world sample running on the system in question, but are not listed. -26.9.2005

import java.applet.*; import java.awt.*; public class hello extends Applet { public void paint(Graphics g) { g.drawString("Hello World!",20,20); } }

 * I took out the following, because it's not a Hello, world program. No one would use code as long and complex as this to test whether their compiler is working. Java always comes with the Appletviewer, which would run the 5-line program I supplied. Java program are rarely stanalone, in that they require the JVM to run. Likewise a VB program requires 6 MB or more of runtime DLLs and EXEs to run, and all Windows GUI programs require the Windows API to run. User:Ed Poor

 * I'm putting it back, because your exlanation here is mostly wrong. Most JVMs /do not/ come with "appletviewer": Sun's do, but there are lots of others that don't (For example, I use GCJ, a Java native compiler, that doesn't). Also, "Hello world" programs are frequently used to test more than just basic compilers, but also libraries and APIs: it is quite common to test a communications library by sending a "Hello world" message, or test a GUI library by drawing a "Hello window".  This program really is a good example of GUI programming in Java, and is far simpler than a GUI program would be using many C libraries.  It might look better compared to something like a Windows GUI "Hello world", or a GNOME "Hello world". Maybe those could go into a separate section?

 * And a lot of 6502 do not come with the "KERNAL ROM" but with something else. Similar argument with many of the examples. -26.9.2005

 * Yes, thanks. Thus the selfish Java meme propagates itself. User:Ed Poor

 * Hi, I've cut the GUI (non-applet) version to 6 lines. It doesn't rely on an applet window. Hope this is satisfactory? Ben Arnold 23:30, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I've cut it back now to 5 lines (one statement with the surrounding method and class definition). Apparently the System.exit(0) call was unnecessary. I'm sure I tried doing without it when I first submitted the program. It's possible that in an earlier JDK showMessageDialog wasn't disposing the dialog or that the JVM didn't use to terminate when all windows were disposed... but it's more likely I was just wrong the first time. Ben Arnold 13:26, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Brainfuck example
I just replaced the brainfuck example with a more concise one written by Urban Müller, who made brainfuck. -Daniel.

 * Can't find the Brainfuck example? --130.243.83.141 17:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, where is the brainfuck example?

 * It seem to have been moved to Hello world program in esoteric languages. --I hate to register 22:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

C example mess-up
Jizzbug messed up the hello world C program about a month ago - he removed the return statement (required in classic ANSI C) and the return type of main (required in C99 / ANSI 2000). I have corrected this, but he also modified the programs for several other languages, and may well have damaged these too; it would be useful if people who know these languages could check that all is well. --Zundark 18:10 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Shell script interpreter call
I wonder if it's a good think to keep the comment calling the interpreter (like #!/usr/local/bin/perl). It's specifically unix and there is a way to run the program without this comment. Ericd 23:54 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think they should be removed. --Zundark 08:34 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hello world string tradition
From the Wiki article: "the tradition of using "Hello, world!" as the test message was probably started by its use as an example program in  the book The C Programming Language, by Brian Kernighan  and Dennis Ritchie." If you actually look at what that book published, you find not  "Hello, world!" but "hello, world". Why do we use the modified form in this Wiki article? - Bevo 12:33, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

SQL example
Is this not valid SQL?:

SELECT 'Hello, world!' AS Greeting;

It works at least in PostgreSQL and mySQL, and avoids the creation and destruction of an unnecessary table. --FOo 12:57, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so, in Oracle you need something like:

SELECT 'Hello, world!' AS greeting FROM dual;

but I don't believe that's ANSI SQL either. OTOH there are various methods like temporary tables which may be "better". Lady Lysine Ikinsile 04:01, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, technically you should do this for ANSI SQL:

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE helloworld (  example varchar(16) ); INSERT INTO helloworld VALUES ('Hello, world!'); SELECT example FROM helloworld; DROP TABLE helloworld;

It's a bit roundabout, but the SELECT xyz; extension, while nice, is proprietary.

-[Unknown]

Embedded literal strings
There is presently a long rant on this page about how all the example programs have embedded text and this is bad practice because such strings cannot be automatically replaced by translations into the user's native language. This is factually inaccurate (some environments allow translation of embedded strings, others do not) and non-NPOV (whether not string separation is good practice is controversial, but it's presented here as universally agreed).

I tried to rework the rant into a brief mention of the issue and a cross reference to Internationalization, where the topic chould be discussed more evenly and at length, but I cannot make it brief without making it unclear. And I'm wondering whether this is an appropriate place to mention this at all. The more I think about it, the more totally offtopic this seems. Thoughts?

 * Zack 06:19, 10 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Well said, Zack. It would be hard to work that other topic in appropriately with this topic.

 * I killed it. Zack

GTK / Windows API examples
Is the GTK exemple serious ?

 * Ericd 08:57, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * It's not the canonical GUI "hello world" program in my book, but tastes may differ. (The way I learned it, a GUI "hello world" is supposed to pop up a window showing that text, and obey the standard quit commands for that GUI -- it may or may not have a quit pushbutton too.)

 * Zack 04:16, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * The standard "hello world" app for the Windows API that I've seen is similar also. According to Petzold (via ): "The original hello-world program in the Windows 1.0 SDK was a bit of a scandal. HELLO.C was about 150 lines long, and the HELLO.RC resource script had another 20 or so more lines... Veteran C programmers often curled up in horror or laughter when encountering the Windows hello-world program". I have a textbook with a Windows API hello-world spread over 3 source files plus a header file -- one for WinMain and the message loop, one for initialising the class and the window, and one for the paint procedure. The program creates a proper overlapped window, with "Hello world" in the client area. Using MessageBox really is cheating. -- Tim Starling 04:42, Sep 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * We should decide about appropriateness of using cheats (e.g. MessageBox) at all. -- Xrgtn 14:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Is this good? After seeing your comment I was going to put it in, but I was afraid someone would change it right back...

#include    LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProcedure(HWND, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM); char szClassName[] = "MainWnd"; HINSTANCE hInstance; int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInst, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) {     HWND hwnd; MSG msg; WNDCLASSEX wincl; hInstance = hInst; wincl.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX); wincl.cbClsExtra = 0; wincl.cbWndExtra = 0; wincl.style = 0; wincl.hInstance = hInstance; wincl.lpszClassName = szClassName; wincl.lpszMenuName = NULL; //No menu wincl.lpfnWndProc = WindowProcedure; wincl.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_BTNFACE + 1); //Color of the window wincl.hIcon = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION); //EXE icon wincl.hIconSm = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION); //Small program icon wincl.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW); //Cursor if (!RegisterClassEx(&wincl)) return 0; hwnd = CreateWindowEx(0, //No extended window styles           szClassName, //Class name            "", //Window caption            WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW & ~WS_MAXIMIZEBOX,            CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT, //Let Windows decide the left and top positions of the window            120, 60, //Width and height of the window,            NULL, NULL, hInstance, NULL); //Make the window visible on the screen ShowWindow(hwnd, nCmdShow); //Run the message loop while (GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0)) {           TranslateMessage(&msg); DispatchMessage(&msg); }     return msg.wParam; }   LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProcedure(HWND hwnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) {     switch (message) {     case WM_CREATE: CreateWindow("STATIC", "Hello, world!", WS_CHILD | SS_NOTIFY | SS_SIMPLE | \                        WS_VISIBLE, 15, 10, 80, 20, hwnd, NULL, hInstance, NULL); break; case WM_DESTROY: PostQuitMessage(0); break; default: return DefWindowProc(hwnd, message, wParam, lParam); }     return 0; }

 * - Evil saltine 05:29, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Why does that create two windows? Or am I confused?  I don't know Windows GUI programming at all.  Would a programmer really write all that, or would they use a higher level "toolkit" library to do the grunt work?

 * Anyhow, I wonder if there should be a separate page for GUI hello world programs. They do tend to be much longer than the simple "print text" variety, and are not really examples of programming in a given language.  They are instead examples of programming to a given API (which may or may not imply a language; Tk for instance can be used from several different languages).

 * Zack 17:32, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * One "window" is the actual window, and the other is the text. That's the way it would probably be written... but I don't know for sure.
 * Evil saltine 21:02, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * In my experience, a toolkit is usually used (although they're not called toolkits). Microsoft's MFC is the most popular, although personally I'm more familiar with VCL. Both are basically wrappers, they don't provide significant functionality like GTK does. Yes, there are two windows: one overlapped parent window and a static text child window. MS Windows programmers have a different definition of the word "window" to ordinary people: controls such as buttons, text boxes, etc. are actually child windows. The hello world program I was referring to didn't create two windows like that, it just used TextOut in response to WM_PAINT. -- Tim Starling 07:51, Sep 15, 2003 (UTC)

More (sub)sections suggested
I suggest we create a (sub)section "Script languages", and perhaps others, to make the article a little more navigable. I'll work on this if no one else does and not too many strongly discourage it. --Wernher 06:22, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Hmmm, let me try to squeeze in another line in this heated discussion. :-) To tidy up the article I also suggest "Assembly languages" to be a section instead of it being a subsection under Line-oriented languages. No protests => 'do it'. --Wernher 21:38, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

PostScript example variant
Postscript: Hello world with shadow.

(Hello world) /Times-Roman findfont setfont 300 50 moveto [0 100 -100 0 0 0] concat /X {gsave .01 setlinewidth dup stringwidth pop .2 add dup neg exch 0 0 -1 4 -1 roll 0 0 1 rlineto rlineto rlineto rlineto stroke grestore .1 .2 rmoveto dup show} def gsave [1 0 2 -.8 0 0] concat .8 setgray X grestore X showpage

(forgot to sign)

I don't undertand why PostScript is under "File Formats" and not unter programming languages. This is clearly a programming language! Not at all at the same sige than HTML or even RTF! The same is true about LaTeX. — MFH: Talk 18:04, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Romanian pseudocode esoteric?
I wonder if the Romanian pseudocode example should rather be placed in the Hello world program in esoteric languages article instead? "Romanian pseudocode" certainly sounds quite esoteric to me, but then again I'm not from Romania... --Wernher 21:44, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

MSDOS example too long
The MSDOS command could just be "@echo Hello, world!" There's no reason for turning echo off on a one line batch script.

 * OK. Please, "be bold" and edit it. Bevo 21:03, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

YaBasic advocacy
"To whom it may concern": please take no offence, but there is absolutely no new information gained by including "Hello world" written in YaBasic as long as we already have a section on Structured BASIC; there's a whole lot of BASICs out there where the Hello world program would look exactly the same -- so we include only a sampling of the most well-known ones. --Wernher 09:54, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * maybe list variations on languages where the things look the same under the earliest of the genre? e.g.,

... panadaCalc ...

growl 'helloWorld'

Also, HoarseFelineCalc, BearCalc, machoMaleCalc.

 * Er -- I'm not quite sure what to make of this, lest it be some sort of humorous(?) comment? --Wernher 20:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Well… some sarcasm maybe, but Anonymous' point is valid. If the "hello world" program is identical in languages X and Y, don't include two programs. Instead include just the X program with the annotation "Also Y." Makes sense, don't you agree?
 * —Herbee 21:12, 2004 Apr 3 (UTC)

 * Ah, now I understand *blush*; thank you. Yes, the point is absolutely valid -- too bad I didn't see at first reading what Anon. was trying to say. For a language with many similar dialects, such as BASIC, a typical listing of variations might be a general reference to e.g. "Microsoft BASIC".  --Wernher 21:58, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

HyperTalk Example
HyperTalk is the programming language behind HyperCard, the popular "stack" programming tool for the Macintosh during the '90s (and in limited use today).

on openStack answer "Hello, World!" end openStack

'open stack' could be any handler, but makes the most sense in a "Hello, World!" example since a stack is really an entire program in HyperCard.

(HyperCard will automatically format control blocks with each indent being, I believe, two spaces.)

Color-coding of hello world programs
User:Rrjanbiah who seems to be a large fan of the  option of   he has recently color coded the Hello world program article to look something like this example of C and C++ and this example of Perl and PHP.

While i agree that readability of these code examples is of the essence i think something like this just crosses the line, first of all it is highly unportable so people would have to run around manually syntax highlighting everything that the php parser doesnt read, second of all the html code produced by said parser can only be horrendous, and third of all it does not follow the Manual of Style,

In the meantime i have reverted the article to it's former state and notified User:Rrjanbiah, he can respond below this line if he disagrees/has anything to add, then we can hold a vote on this. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:25, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

 * I've checked the manual of style, and couldn't find a clear policy on this, so I started a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipeda_talk:Manual_of_Style#Syntax_highlighting_for_source_code.

Before thinking of voting, these days it's called a survey. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Survey_guidelines. But best if this were discussed on the talk for manual of style first. Kim Bruning 22:35, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PHP Example
I corrected the

Hello World!

to

The former just can't be right, because the text outside of  tag-pairs is not interpreted by the PHP-engine and if you put the text "Hello World" inside the tags without echo or print, then you just get an error.

 * It is, technically, correct. Text outside of  is passed, through unmodified.  For example:

15> cat >hello.php Hello, world ^D 16> php hello.php Hello, world 17>

 * However, given that the idea is to demonstrate the basic structure of the language (IMHO), I think the more complex example is more useful. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 23:29, 2004 Jul 15 (UTC)

I changed primary PHP example back to Hello, world! and put  in as a secondary example, the reason for this is that each Hello world example should display the simplest way to print "Hello, world" using the language, and printing and ignoring everything outside  tags is a feature of php, and thus the simplest way to print "Hello, world" is the first example above. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:50, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

The title
Clicking on "Hello world" program leads to an appropriately named edit window for that page, so surely moving the article there (i hasten to add, using the Move link, not cutting and pasting into the window i provided by that link) will produce the desired result. The present title is contrary to the in-line-text usage of the article, & bad English syntax. (Why would anyone say hello to a world program, whatever that is?) Unless i've missed a prohibition in the WP:MOS, i intend to rename this page's article in that way. --Jerzy(t) 22:31, 2004 Jul 29 (UTC)

Uselessness of various alternates
There are certain various useless alternate examples that I'm removing. Python has two examples, one showing that you can use the sys object to produce output. Rexx demonstrates that you could use single or double quotes for the string. This is not useful. In the languages I'm more familiar with (Perl and Ruby) there are several ways of expressing strings, and there are several ways of getting data to STDOUT. I'm sure many other languages have their slight variations on these themes. If we were to apply the treatment Python and Rexx have received to every language on the list, the page would become three times as large and ten times as annoying. In the interest of consistency, I'm trimming off some of this stuff. --Yath 21:46, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree! It seems quite silly that an article on the hello world program should now be approching the 32k range. I'd like to offer a suggestion, where we refactor the article in such a way that the one-liners don't have to take up so much real estate... Um, I was going to be bold, but I was fairly sure someone would just immediate revert, so I present it here on the talk page:

One Liners

 * Here is a listing of those languages where "hello world" is a simple one-liner, that is, where a literal-notation for the string "hello world" is generally preceeded or followed by a single command to either send the string out to a console or to a graphical user interface, such as a dialog box:

WRITE "Hello, world!" ABC trace ("Hello, world!")                  ActionScript 'Hello, world!'                   APL display dialog "Hello, world!" AppleScript BEGIN { print "Hello, world!" }                 AWK ShowMessage("Hello, world!");                 Delphi,Kylix puts(1, "Hello, world!")                  EUPHORIA -TYPE Hello, world! Focus ." Hello, world!" CR                Forth println["Hello, world!"]                  Frink print,"Hello, world!" IDL "Hello, world!" print             Io WriteLine "Hello, world!" Kogut alert( "Hello, world!" );                JavaScript print [Hello, world!]                   Logo print "Hello, world!" Lua W "Hello, world!" M (MUMPS) Print["Hello, world!"]                  Mathematica print "Hello, world!\n";                Perl echo "Hello, world!";                  PHP 'Hello, world!' =>                POP-11 write('Hello, world!'),nl. Prolog print "Hello, world!" Python MsgBox "Hello, world!" REALbasic say "Hello, world!" REXX puts "Hello, world!" Ruby (display "Hello, world!")                  Scheme sed -ne '1s/.*/Hello, world!/p'                 sed 'Hello, world!' print. Self Transcript show: 'Hello, world!'                   Smalltalk print "Hello, world!\n";                SML #OUTPUT Hello, world! TACL puts "Hello, world!" Tcl put "Hello, world!" Turing echo 'Hello, world!'                   UNIX-style shell MsgBox "Hello, world!" Visual Basic WScript.Echo "Hello, world!" Windows Script Host

So, what does everyone think? func(talk) 04:54, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * What about the shebangs? Won't someone think of the shebangs? (And preprocessor directives, if you must.) ... I'm not sure I like this. "That other junk" is pretty important. --Yath 06:33, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

My only concern is that such a simple notion as "hello world" doesn't need such a tediously long article. In terms of the assembly languages, the code is really interesting, but in terms of languages where it's more or less just a command and string, what exactly are we trying to show people? All of these examples don't teach us any more about: Nor does it really teach us anything about the differences between these languages. A better way to do that would be to provide a link to 99 Bottles of Beer. func(talk) 16:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * what hello world is
 * why hello world is used''

 * (William M. Connolley 17:03, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)) HW is a useful test. To *write* HW doesn't need a long article but to list it for various languages does. We are trying to show people the differences between various languages. Obviously not a full comparison but its useful from the quick-and-dirty POV.

Er, right, and that's what my example does. It shows a quick and dirty example of HW in dozens of languages, without taking up hundreds of lines. Note that I wasn't suggesting removing any language example whatsoever, I just thought that for those languages where it's a one-line affair, we could simplify. (My personal opinion is that HW is the silliest way one could choose to show language differences, but I wasn't advocating removing anything). func(talk) 17:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * With a basic knowledge of a variety of programming languages, I actually find looking up a 'hello, world' program a simple refresher with regard to syntax of a particular language. so for me, this article is great... thanks to the various authors. --Mysteronald 19:16, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * (William M. Connolley 18:47, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)) Oh, sorry, I misunderstood you. You are proposing to condense the one-liners as above? Fine by me.

I believe that the list of programs does not belong in this article. It should be moved to List of hello world programs or something. I also believe that each entry in that list, as well as the examples retained here, should include all canonical preprocessor directives, shebang lines, etc. The environment in which a language normally operates is an important aspect of the language. In fact, the differences between C's #include  and Perl's #!/usr/bin/perl -w tell you a lot more about these languages than their respective print[f] statements. --Yath 04:46, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree. The gigantic list of examples should be moved to List of Hello world programs (redirect with lowercase h), leaving a description of the phenomenon and maybe the original / famous K&R C example. Hairy Dude 01:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

We could also make lists :
 * Languages in which  print "Hello, world!" ;    is valid.
 * Languages in which  echo "Hello, world!";      is valid.
 * same with parentheses...  — MFH: Talk 20:26, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Page too large
The Wiki is giving a page warning. How do we split this thing? Aliter 19:21, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I suggest splitting it into "Hello world program (examples)" [Unknown] 19:33, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

 * I heartily agree with this suggestion. This page has definitely become unwiedly, and it serves two primary purposes. It first, explains what a Hello World program is and its history/origins, then goes on to provide a ton of examples. I do not think that splitting the language examples into different articles between those that are current and 'esoteric' or based on their interfaces would be prudent. These categories may change over time or may become redundant.
 * No matter what type of splitting occurs, this article will always be large, and that is partly the point. However, a description of Hello World programs in general, and a listing of various examples are two fundamentally different topics. --Inarius 08:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

You mean splitting the list of from the description? Though functionally a good think, it will not save us for very long, I expect. The programs take up the bulk of the article anyway. Aliter 19:43, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Make a new page at List of hello world programs or something, move the bulk of them over, and leave a representative example of major programming languages on this page. People will disagree about which programs are major enough to warrant inclusion on this page, but so be it. I'd be bold if I had the time... I suggest you just go ahead. --Yath 21:01, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Another possibility is to leave in this article only the text oriented examples, and move to new articles the 'GUI', 'Document formats', and 'Page Description languages' examples (to follow the same convention that made with the examples in esoteric languages. In fact, I've just deleted the Befunge and Brainfuck examples because they were in the article 'Hello world program in esoteric languages'). -- suruena 09:23, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

 * I very much agree with this idea - Hello world program in document formats, etc. -[Unknown] 09:59, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

 * If in one week nobody complains, I'll move 'GUI', 'Document formats', and 'Page Description languages' examples to three new articles (and to fix the internal references of other articles that links to this one). But please, I'm not a native english speaker so, could someone help me choosing good names for the new articles? Thanks -- suruena 09:32, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

 * Hmm... well, I would suggest:

 * Hello world program in page description languages
 * Hello world program in document formats
 * Hello world program using GUI
 * But, I'm not sure. -[Unknown] 21:09, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

The right place to this is Hello_world, let's keep the article small, descriptive and elegant. --EliasTorres 01:28, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I 'm sure you meant Hello world program using GUIs, Brackets? I think the splitting up is a good idea, but of course the remaining article is very huge anyway. Elias is perhaps on to something, but on the other hand it's nice to have the examples in WKP. Ah, decisions, decisions... The Tyranny of Choice! :( --Wernher 02:14, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I know, it's good to have examples, maybe the C hello world example and maybe five more, but the HUGE list perhaps belongs to Hello_world (or to a separated list). We can use resulting:

 * EliasTorres 08:41, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Disagree, just because the wiki is giving a warning doesn't mean you have to split the page. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:28, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Newlines
Why do some examples use newlines (eg. Perl) while others do not? It seems to me that they should be consistent, and personally I would suggest no newlines... but some languages don't even allow that (well, I'm thinking of DOS batch files, but they hardly count anyway.) -[Unknown] 21:01, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

 * The hello world program is supposed to output a newline. Some languages have print statements that automagically add a newline and some don't. Perl doesn't. Python and Ruby do. Hopefully, the page is already consistent in this regard. --Yath 22:50, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Okay, I updated some of the examples to do this, except where it didn't make sense or I wasn't sure about the language (eg. JavaScript *shouldn't* use a newline in popups.), and I also tried to fix a few places which were using "Hello, world" or similar because most of the examples used the standard "Hello, world!" (with exclamation mark.) -[Unknown] 21:01, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, if you want to get involved in the standard form, they should all say "hello, world". This was the first known use, in http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/btut.html Mga 02:12, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Other Languages
It occurs to me that this page can be translated into other languages extremely easily. Since programming languages do not change between England and Germany, for instance, we could get a German translation with the simple replacement of "Hello, World!" with "Hallo, Welt!". Is this already done or have I overlooked something?

 * Scroll to the bottom of the page when editing; you'll see that there are a great many languages featuring this article (or, that is, a translated version of it.) -[Unknown] 07:45, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Translating the "Hello, World" concept into different languages
Hello. I think that these examples could be more useful and interesting if an attempt were made to translate the notion of "simplest interesting program in language X" rather than "simplest program to do console output in language X". Many of the languages listed are procedural languages which are not conceptually very different from C, so their "Hello, World" programs are not very different. However, Prolog, for example, is quite different from C, so its "Hello, World" program should show something about the concepts behind Prolog. Comments? Regards & happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 01:30, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unexplained part in ARM
For the RISC OS entry, somebody (anon) came up with a neat and more concise version of what I wrote, but there is this comment:

"or the even smaller version (from qUE);"

I have no idea what qUE is, does anybody happen to know, or should I remove the "from qUE" part?

Page too wide
The page is too wide. Maybe long lines should be splitted? It isn't much difference if you, for example, make line break between list of funcion parameters. --Derbeth 22:47, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I moved the "too-long-one-liner" Malbolge example over to the esoteric languages article, where it belongs, and took the chance of splitting the "offending line" of the Ruby GUI example in two, marking the split with a backslash ("\"), which is common in some text editors, and in some compilers/languages. I reckon I'll be swiftly corrected if that makes it incorrect Ruby syntax :-) --(talk to) Wernher 01:42, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * According to a couple pages I found on Google, the slash is actually valid syntax.   I don't actually know Ruby, though, so I can't confirm it. -[Unknown] 06:34, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

 * It's correct syntax. Ruby [vaporware] developer confirms. The best source? Type in the program and run it. ^_^ Paulymer5 22:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I made some changes, now article has right width. --Derbeth 15:06, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Eh -- interesting; I thought *I* did it, as of this edit? Whatever, main thing is its OK. :-) --Wernher 16:51, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Too many BASICs!
IMHO there were far too many BASIC dialects listed in this article which used the same example. The vast majority of BASIC compilers and interpreters understand the following code:

10 PRINT "Hello, world!" 20 END

Yes, some dialects support minor variations on the above—Commodore BASIC allows one to substitute ? for PRINT, and many structured BASIC dialects make the line numbers optional. But there is no reason for showcasing all these little optional variations when the compiler/interpreter in question can process the elementary version above.

I have therefore removed all subsections on specific BASIC dialects which are capable of running the above example and added an explanatory note under the main BASIC heading. (I suspect that there may be more dialects which could also be collapsed, but I'm not familiar enough with them to test this hypothesis.)

In the future, I think it would be a good idea if people refrained from adding more BASIC dialects to the article unless they are incapable of processing the above example.

Likewise I recommend that similar procedures be followed for other programming languages on this page. We don't need to list all possible shortcuts and dialectical variations when the compiler/interpreter is capable of processing an ISO/ANSI/IEEE/ECMA/de facto standard version of the language. —Psychonaut 15:37, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Not only Commodore BASIC, but every BASIC variant I've used allows ? for PRINT. Most of them are Microsoft BASIC variants, i.e. Commodore BASIC, GW-BASIC and AmigaBASIC, but AMOS on the Amiga also allows it, and it is not related with Microsoft. Maybe they got the idea from AmigaBASIC? 85.76.152.179 15:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm pretty sure I was using ? for PRINT back in 1969 on a GE timesharing system. If not that far back, then in the mid-70s on whatever mini-computer we had at school (Data General, IIRC).  Either way, long before the Amiga.

 * I agree, I used ? on Tandy (Tandy 1000 ?) BASIC in the 70's. (My first contact with a computer... I didn't know anything about computers and figured out by myself that if I prefixed expressions like 1+2 with '?', it showed the result. If not, nothing seemed to happen... ;-)  — MFH: Talk 20:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I am the user 85.76.152.179 above. By "Maybe they got the idea from AmigaBASIC?" I meant AMOS. I was not implying AmigaBASIC invented the entire concept. I used ? for PRINT in Commodore BASIC years before I had even heard of the Amiga.   — J I P | Talk 28 June 2005 09:29 (UTC)

Java "OOP" version
Someone wrote a version in Java meant as an example of object-oriented programming. I'm not sure whether it was a meant as a parody of OO or Java, or as a well-intentioned contribution. I have removed this in any case because it was verbose. The point of Hello World is to be a simple test application. The more complicated you make your Hello World program the more you have to debug if it doesn't work, which defeats the purpose. Anyway the Java version as it stands is reasonably OO. System.out is an object that receives the message "println" with a string object as a parameter. You could instantiate Hello and do the work from the constructor, but you'd have to do that from the non-OO main method anyway. Ben Arnold 14:11, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * System.out is a class with a static method called println (the signature of which is public static void println(String arg), that is, it takes as the implicit parameter the name of the calss, and can only operate on its own internal data (varialbes, constants, adn literals),parameters, and the class's static fields (I beleive that tehr arenone in the System.out class). The java API documentation, avaliable with most java distributions lists this in more dtatil.

XML
Is there a valid reason that XML isn't featured, or should I add it? -- VJ 17:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

assembly needs not to be cryptic
I forgot most of what I knew about 65xx programming, but I think the given code does really make an effort on being as much cryptical as possible. I'd suggest at least the following:

putchar = $ffd2 ; system "chrOut" routine: send char to current output device LDX  #0 loop:  LDA   message,X   ; load character BEQ  return JSR  putchar     ; print it         INX BNE  loop return: RTS message: .ASC "Hello, world!" .BYTE 0

I don't remember the exact address, but I'm sure that there was also a routine for sending a null terminated string "at once". (What was $EA17 ?)  — MFH: Talk 17:45, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Your version is 3 bytes longer, but yes, easier to understand. Mirror Vax 18:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * In the Commodore 16 at least, JSR $FF4F writes a null-terminated string that immediately follows the JSR; then returns to the instruction after the null byte. Another nicety is in the Canon X-07 where one of the single-byte RST instructions of the Z80-compatible processor vectors to the putchar routine.

<p> tag in HTML example
The information about the <p> in the simple HTML example was incorrect. The new block is simply stacked on top of the <h1> block (at least, it should be). Also, both tags are left open at the end of the document. Not really a problem, of course, but not formally correct. Even more, those whole header tags are unnecessary for the example.

I edited the example to close with the proper tag.

C: puts or printf?
It seems that at 22:08, 28 June 2005, an unknown user changed the C function used to write "Hello, world" from the classic "printf" to "puts", and also removed the "\n" (for \n, see the talk above).

I'm aware that puts is valid, and possibly even a better alternative than printf, which is designed to print formatted text, but I think of all the examples on the page, C is the one which should honor the original by using printf. This is reflected in the fact that every C example I have ever seen uses printf, including the original, and I quote from the article in question:

 * The book had inherited the program from a 1974 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Kernighan —Programming in C: A Tutorial— which shows the first known version of the program:

main { printf("Hello, world!"); }

We've updated it to conform to the new ANSI standards but should not change printf. Therefore, I have changed it back to printf and added the "\n" back in. —EatMyShortz 6 July 2005 16:41 (UTC)

 * printf for sure!

 * Atlant 6 July 2005 16:48 (UTC)

 * If the purpose of the "Hello World"-example is to present a minimal (and in this case ANSI C conforming) program that displays "Hello, World!" and a trailing newline, then

int main(void) {   puts("Hello, World!"); return 0; }
 * 1) include <stdio.h>

 * is the way to go. (Observe that `puts' adds a newline to the output.)

 * --Akarl 15:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Microsoft Word example
While I find the MS-Word section hilarious, is this really germaine to this article? Isn't this something that belongs in an article about MS-Word, perhaps in a section that discusses ineffencies in its storage methods?

(But let me say again, it's hilarious)

MFC example
I miss an MFC example. Somthing like that:

AfxMessageBox("Hello, world!");

C variants?
Would it be salacious to include important C variants such as this example coded with the programming library for the Sega Saturn:

void ss_main(void) {   slPrint("Hello, world!", slLocate(9,2)); slSynch; }
 * 1) include "sgl.h"

There are important differences in these forms as compared to regular POSIX C. ThomasWinwood 15:44, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Mathematica program misspelling?
I noticed that in the Mathematica example it says:

Prant["Hello world!"]

[sic] I've never used Mathematica, but that doesn't quite look right to me. Is the print command really called "Prant"?

Cheating in GUI examples
GUI example of "Hello World" may be considered as a "skeleton"-like example of GUI program, but different kinds of message boxes, alarms et al. are not equal substitute. That's why such simplifications could be considered cheats. See e.g. full blown example of Windows API Hello World vs. its MessageBox implementation.

It's pity that many examples provide only "cheat" implementation, like Python/Tkinter (tkMessageBox), VisualBasic (MsgBox), Cocoa/GNUStep/objC (NSRunAlertPanel)...

If it's hard to find more appropriate examples, I propose just to place all theese into separate section and have, for example, the next split:

 * 1) Text user interface (Known as TUI, console or line-oriented)
 * 2) Graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
 * 3) Primitive graphical user interfaces

-- Xrgtn 14:52, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

 * To distinguish "cheat" and "valid" GUI examples, I propose the next rule of extensibility: if it's easy to modify an example to add let's say a text field and/or a button, then the example is "good". For instance, the Tcl/Tk example:

label .l -text "Hello, world!" pack .l
 * should be considered good, because you can easily add a button to the window:

label .l -text "Hello, world!" button .b -text exit -command exit pack .l .b
 * -- Xrgtn 15:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

KML for Google Earth Section
Does the KML section really constitute a legitimate example of a Hello World program? --Dalziel 86 08:31, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it doesn't. --tyomitch 08:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The PBASIC example
From the PBASIC example: "or, the typical microcontroller Hello World program equivalent with the only output device present being a light-emitting diode (LED) (in this case attached to the seventh output pin)".

And it blinks forever in a regular pattern. Would it be so wrong to have it blink "HELLO WORLD" in Morse code? --Damian Yerrick 04:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Not at all; a very nice "exercise for the student", actually. :) But not really required if we only want a simple test to see whether we have a minimum degree of functionality present in the controller, its connections, and the toolchain. --Wernher 06:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Examples with empty lines
Some examples are shown in several boxes instead of one box. This happens when an example contains empty lines. Wikipedia interprets empty lines as end of the box.

I think the examples are easier to recognice and to read when each example is in one box (instead of several boxes). To reach this I added one space at the beginning of empty lines. I did this just for examples where it seems clear to me. Other spaces in empty lines should be added by someone else.

This article is ridiculously long
and has way too many subsectionsSavidan 12:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

References section
With hundreds of examples of programming languages on the page, why in the world are there exactly two references, both regarding PHP? It seems to me that any references should be general, about "Hello, World!", not regarding any one particular programming language. These belong at best on the PHP page.

bold edit
it seems that somebody did a really bold edit... I don't disagree that the former version of the article was not very nice to look at, but it should be at least possible to find the information which had been here before; at present, I cannot find any link to another WP page named *"hello world"* — MFH:Talk 05:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

So what happened to the list of "hello, world" programs? It looks like it may have been moved to another article, List of hello world programs, which was subsequently deleted. What gives? I agree that the main article should be short and sweet (and should only mention the original C program), but the list of programs in many other languages is useful, if for no other reason than it allows novice programmers to compare different programming languages. Can we re-instate the list article? — Loadmaster 17:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Found out that the list has been trans-wikied to Wikibooks. That's probably a good thing. should there be a link to it in this article? — Loadmaster 00:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Absolutely agreed. Mystifying that all that could have been removed without a reference being put in its place. I'd add it, but I dunno if it should be listed under 'See also' or 'External links' or other. 68.221.125.16 21:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

 * -- ah, I found it in the history - looks like it was linked to two different pages at one time so, in the interest of cleaning up, the link was removed... twice. I put the current one back. 68.221.125.16 21:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

AJAX
Do you want to know about this programming?

YES
Yes, I want to know this programming.

Hello world! What the heck do I need to make this thing work on my PC?
Hello Everyone!

I'd like to try this programme in C and totally confused about how this thing is set in to reality. I suppose these few lines are no to be written on the backside of a chocolate paper, but need a computer and program or environment, or call that whatever that can execute this. So how do I get this working, where is it going to print "Hello world!"?

I have Windows XP so don't have any preinstalled thing where I just would have to copy paste the text and click on "C'mon!".

Actually got interested by reading K&R2, nice book though it does not tell anything about where actually should one type those lines. It's like teaching swimming by telling how you have to move your arms and legs, but not telling that you have to go to the swimming pool, jump into the water and then doing the things with your legs and arms that has been taught. Brr... swimming in theory...

Thanks for any hints, if you understand my problem.

Geraldo —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.2.88.88 (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC).

 * I suppose K&R doesn't address the practicalities of compiling and running one's code because when it was written that could be a very site-dependent thing. That's why it's still relevent to you now, even though when it was written many of its readers would probably have been punching their code into cards to hand in to the mainframe operators.

 * To write your code you will need a text editor. Notepad will do, though you'd want to get your hands on something more capable for serious use. You will also need a compiler, which takes the text you write and turns it into a program that can run. I can't give you any first-hand advice here because I've never programmed on Windows (on Linux a C compiler is built-in, and on Mac OS X it's an option that can be enabled). A very quick google suggests that MinGW might be suitable for you, but don't take my word for it. I'm sure if you search for 'windows c compiler' you'll come across something.

 * You might also encounter something called an Integrated Development Environment or IDE. These combine an editor, compiler, and many other tools and are absolute lifesavers for people writing serious code. But they're also a lot more complicated than straightforward compilers and may overwhelm you to begin with. If you're still struggling to run Hello World I'd recommend sticking to the simpler way of doing things.

 * I hope this is helpful, and good luck in your explorations. If you have more questions it might be worth asking at the relevent Wikipedia reference desk PeteVerdon 01:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

removed link
Removed a link to "rawbw.com," as WOT has rated it untrustworthy, and "containing adult content" 68.183.36.159 (talk) 23:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

can we add at least a c++ code to the wiki?
i feel the article is very naked with a proper c++ code, consider it is the most stable and widely used programming languege there is today.

int main {  cout<<"Hello World."; return 0; }
 * 1) include <iostream.h>

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by O1001010 (talk • contribs).

 * A wag might observe that we already have a perfectly-valid C++ program; it's the first one in the article ;-).
 * Atlant 16:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

that will compile? hummm.

 * By definition, any valid C program is a valid C++ program.
 * Atlant 23:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

 * No, that's not correct. C is not an exact subset of C++. The first (C) program in the article is not valid C++ code. In fact, it's not even valid C99 code. See Compatibility of C and C++ for more details.
 * As far as adding a C++ example, I think it is far more appropriate to provide only historically significant source code for the first few "Hello, world" programs, and let the List of hello world programs article provide all the rest.
 * — Loadmaster 23:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

 * "the most stable and widely used Fact programming languege there is today."?--Exidor (talk) 11:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me point out that the "C++" code above is not ISO standards compliant. It should say <iostream>, not <iostream.h>. Most university computer science departments today teach Java as their introductory language, rather than C or C++, anyway. Also, according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index, Java has long been the most popular programming language, with C in second place and C++ in third. --JHP (talk) 05:17, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least..
if not the most prevalent, how about [one of] the most esoteric? Brainf*ck!

+++++[>>>++++++<<<-]>>>++<<<++++++ ++++[>++++++++++<-]>+++++++++<++++ +++[>>+++++++++++<<-]>>-.+++++ <.+++++++..+++.>>>.<<<++++ ++++..+++.--..

Marcthepirate 18:20, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Again, see the List of hello world programs. Given the existence of that page it's probably more important to decide which specific examples to leave out of this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.27.216.35 (talk) 04:56, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

New tag for <source>code
I did not initially use this tag for the sample in B but someone has applied it pretending that the code is in C. If this is OK, then fine: otherwise could someone remove it? I'm not right now sufficiently clear that B is close enough to C for this to be valid. TIA HAND Phil | Talk 16:52, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

 * You're correct; C's syntax is not the same as B's, and that program demonstrates a couple of the differences. I've reverted the <source> tags to <code> anyway (per my comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages, which you [Phil] already know about). <code> has the additional benefit of graceful degradation; I've tagged the B code with <code lang="b">, which would produce a nasty error message if you tried it with <source>. --Quuxplusone 06:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Could we have a separate article on Hello world on different languages?
Could we have a separate article on Hello world on different languages to write hello world code in every language on earth?
 * I think that's more of a thing for wikibooks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.191.136.194 (talk) 13:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

should the LSL variation be mentioned?
in the virtual world Second Life when one creates a new script it is by default a variant of the hello world theme, instead of "hello world" it says "hello avatar". Should it be mentioned on this article?--TiagoTiago 21:57, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello World BASIC
A BASIC program of Hello World is short, sweet, and shows one of the most simple if not the most simple Hello World Program.

Print "Hello World"

It is just as important as all of those other programming languages with the exception of C.

Super 4 Vegeta 22:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Fortran 90
program prb implicit none

! here is the execution part

write(*,*) 'Hello World'

read(*,*) !this forces the pressing of a key before a window is closed

end program prb —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.169.24.250 (talk) 18:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

is the history acurate?
I was reading the instruction book for a trs-80 which ran on basic and i discovered that it also gave hello world as an example. if memory serves (this was a while ago) it said that the use of hello world had been part of a trdition started before BASIC! could someone find a way to check me on this and then if i'm right change the history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.250.3.220 (talk) 21:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Pre-history of the phrase
I wonder where the phrase actually comes from. Perhaps from some movie, animated cartoon, or TV show? (They would be fitting words for a newly hatched chick, for instance.) If so, it may have been something that Kerighan (or some earlier programmer) watched; meaning that it could be from anywhere between the 1930's and the 1960's. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

and in GOL:
This is the GOL code for hello world:

outputmessage~ Hello World

 * Check out http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm for a place to submit Hello World programs into a Collection. 92.192.120.33 (talk) 20:45, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I reverted two of Andy Dingley's recent reversions
Two anons, one of them me and the other someone else, recently made constructive changes to this article that were reverted by User:Andy Dingley. I've reverted those changes. Because my changes (and the other anon's) were made in good faith, and I believe Andy's changes were also made in good faith, I'd like to explain why I've made the reversions. If disagreement remains we can discuss. I know there is an unfortunate tendency among some WP editors to feel like anon edits are not constructive and that reverting them doesn't require the same amount of thought or discussion. I hope that's not the case here. Anyway, moving on...

The "exposition on B" that Andy presumably added (which I then removed) is pasted below for clarity:

"An exposition: the only fundamental data type in B is the machine word. On the Honeywell 6070, the machine that the particular version of B that was described ran on, this is 4 bytes long. The character constant correctly expresses this fact. There is no = in initializers in B."

I removed this blurb because it has nothing whatever to do with Hello World, the subject of this article, and instead serves only to explain how the B programming language works. In my original removal comment I noted that this material more properly belongs in article about B, and indeed, it is extensively treated there already. As we link to the B (programming language) article in the text, an interested reader can easily find a thorough treatment. Furthermore, I find the "An exposition:" clause to be stylistically inappropriate.

In general, the whole paragraph describes something that should be immediately obvious to any computer programmer (B is not so different from C that it isn't clear). For the non-programming audience, this article is already not particularly accessible, and Andy's paragraph is clearly not aimed at them anyway. "machine words", "bytes", "no = in initializers" wouldn't make sense to anyone who doesn't program already. It's basically just a detour. This article is not meant to introduce B to the masses.

Now, on to the other anon's change. He removed Lisp from the list of functional languages, because, well, Lisp is not a functional programming language. Not only do people from the staticly typed ML and Haskell worlds not consider Lisp to be a functional programming language, but Lispers themselves are constantly pointing out that Lisp is multi-paradigm. These days, when people say Lisp, they generally mean Common Lisp, which most certainly is not functional (the standard doesn't mandate TCO in implementations, programmers make pervasive use of imperative DSLs like LOOP, the fact that it's a lisp-2 makes first class manipulation of functions more cumbersome, etc).

If you want to keep a member of the Lisp-family in that list, then substitute Scheme for Lisp -- Scheme is a Lisp, but it is not understood to be the Lisp in the way that CL is.

This is important because Lisp is widely believed to be a functional language by programmers with no experience with either functional programming or Lisp. We should not propagate this misconception.

Thanks. 72.42.144.222 (talk) 17:23, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

 * First of all, thanks for splashing my name all over the edit history comments and even the section header, whilst you prefer to hide behind an anon IP. Aren't we supposed to be discussing the edits, not the editor? Remember too that WP:AGF works both ways. I'd also point out that I've barely edited this article and didn't contribute either of these sections. Please don't presume that I'm an author with WP:OWN when you could have checked the logs first. You expect to be treated as a special case of an anon IP that's not a vandal (they're about as rare as a Pacific Northwest tree octopus), but you won't extend a similar courtesy to others.

 * Firstly the B exposition. diff. Yes, it's ugly. So think of a better way to phrase it and edit it, rather than blindly deleting.
 * B isn't C, especially when it comes to declaring literal strings. Whilst the phrasing of this isn't wonderful, the listing is confusing without it. Part of the value of "Hello World" historically was that you often had to work past crazy hindering syntax like this to get anything to work and that's why such a trivial program (in function) remained valuable, as its effort of implementation was anything but. Demonstrating the sheer cussedness of any coding in those days (Coral 66 took me 3 days to get HW working) adds value to the article for a modern reader who would otherwise barely credit why we bothered, or seemed so pleased when it worked.

 * Secondly the removal of Lisp "a functional language". diff.
 * Clearly if you read the context of the article Lisp (as the best known suitable example) ought to be included here and "functional language" is where the problem lies. ML or Haskell might even vanish too. This isn't a discourse on whether Lisp is or isn't functional (that's uninteresting anyway, as it depends on your precision when defining "Functional"). Besides which, I thought you didn't like discourses on language details... The reason why Lisp, functional languages and Haskell get mentioned at all is because they're "recursion friendly" languages (to coin a neologism) where the popular HW is a factorial rather than a println. That's all we care about in this context, not definitions of "functional".
 * I don't claim that this sentence is perfect. But deleting Lisp makes it worse. It removes the one vaguely well-recognised term of the four and leaves the reader floundering. People who have even heard of Haskell, or who are comfortable with the finer details of language taxonomy, are rarely going to be those needing to have Hello World explained to them. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

99 Bottles of Beer (http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/)

 * Should this be edited in for comparison to Hello World as a programming-language teaching tool?

KingAlanI (talk) 19:13, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization Hello world vs Hello World
There is inconsistancy between the different versions of the subject of the article. Some are spelled with world capitalized and some not, for example. Is this difference meaningful and correct in some way or is it just inconsistancy? Is there an accepted capitalization scheme? If not is there a reason why in the generic we shouldn't just pick one and go with it (i.e. except when referring to actual specific outputs)?

Goodbye world.--24.29.234.89 (talk) 07:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Grammatical inaccuracy
Few have noted the grammatical inaccuracy of the statement "Hello World". That it should, in fact, be "Hello, World" according to the vocative use of the comma. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Technome (talk • contribs) 15:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

History Incomplete
One should note that "Hello World" is a somewhat peculiar phrase to be used in a first program. Herein lies the fact that the article's history section doesn't go back very far and certainly not to the roots of the phrase. Where did it come from?

Indeed, in my computing classes back in the 1974, "Hello" alone was used; it was seen as an interesting personification of the computer -- making it talk back to you. This first program was usually augmented by adding one's own name to the end, e.g. "Hello Peter." My own later experience in teaching had my students doing the same thing, even in test examples for a book we published in the early 80's.

But going back prior to the 70's, "Hello World" was in common use by the amateur (Ham) radio community and had been since the advent of the first voice signals (as illustrated by Danny Gregory's book "Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio"). I haven't done the research to see if it was common before that among Morse users. If radio aficionados were the first, the probable reason is that, due to the wide range of radio signals, saying "Hello World" seemed appropriate. As well, and in that Thomas Edison is said to have coined common usage of "Hello" for telephones in 1877 (in contrast to A. G. Bell's suggestion of "Ahoy"), it may be unlikely that the two-word phrase appeared before that time.

205.143.140.239 (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2011 (UTC) Pete Sawyer

"Predates the World Wide Web" ?
I fail to understand why that phrase is there... It also predates the invention of graphene, the fall of the Berlin wall, the 1998 Soccer World Cup, and the 2004 olympics.

The fact that "World Wide Web" has the word "World" in it doesn't make it relevant for this article.

This article is about a very small program, originally written in B, famously published in C. Nothing to do with the web. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.245.100.11 (talk) 19:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

 * It was a bad change. It relates more to GUIs than the web, and some supposed (but broadly irrelevant) distinction between programs limited to stdio and those with richer UIs. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:08, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

History looks like it may be Original Research
The History section of this article does not reference any sources that study the history of "Hello World". I can't currently find any sources to support the claims made in this section, and the references provided are merely links to related materials. (such as the webpage for the programming language B and someone's blog post about a "Hello World" program they made) This is sort of worrisome as this section has existed for quite a while, and other websites seem to be referencing this. (1)(2)(3) Either the source supporting this assertion should be found, or the section removed altogether if a history cannot be found. 129.244.55.36 (talk) 23:31, 20 September 2012 (UTC) references the book in question, but does not provide any sources that say this was one of the first books to do such. Additionally, "the tradition of using the phrase "Hello, world!" as a test message was influenced by an example program in the seminal book The C Programming Language." is also unverified, and although it may make sense as the book is influential, a secondary source should verify such claims. I don't know what you mean by B & C being claims, if you mean the programming language like I think you do, but I did not mean to say that. If it were just to show that the programming language exists or to link to related materials, then those references would be fine; the problem is that they're being used as references to show the source of the "Hello, World" program, when these sources say nothing about being that source. (they also would be primary sources, and would fail the original research guidelines as per WP:PRIMARY) So far, I can't find any secondary sources (that don't reference this article) that would support that claim. 129.244.140.211 (talk) 04:48, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What claims? B & C?  These are very well attested. Ask your grandad. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, speaking from another IP. For example, the line "The first known instance of the usage of the words "hello" and "world" together in computer literature occurred earlier, in Kernighan's 1972 Tutorial Introduction to the Language B,[1] with the following code:"
 * Then find a source that shows an earlier claim and add it. Andy Dingley (talk) 08:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem is I can't find anything to support the claims that I quoted, nor can I find anything that talks about the history of the "Hello World" program that isn't ripped from this article. 129.244.140.211 (talk) 14:59, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Link to factorial?
I see lots of people implementing recursive factorial as their second program in a language they're learning. Maybe this page could link to factorial in the "see also" section?

Online Quiz
Can anyone explain what relevance this link (C Online Quiz) in the main page has to the subject?

External link removed
I removed the following external link:

 * helloworld.googletoad.com The Hello World Collection with 360+ programming language

because it's a mere copy (and one that gives no credit to the original author) of the Hello World Collection at http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm which doesn't add any original content. wr 80.137.174.130 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 21:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Update: Someone put in the same link again, probably in order to promote this copycat site (which has ads). I removed the link again. Seems like this person has been busy reverting attempts to remove the link to his site. Hundreds of people have contributed to the original Collection, and this guy copied it, removed all the credits and wants to promote it as if it was his original work, and possibly make money from it. The original site has all the credits, no ads, and (by now) more languages. wr 80.137.168.174 (talk) 20:13, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

 * Another update: This seems to be turning into an undo war. Although his link has been removed several times, he always returns to put it back in. Anyone know how to stop this abuse? wr 80.137.168.125 (talk) 22:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Just get a admin to ban the user. Besides, if the roesler-ac.de one is on the web, why do we need this? Kelton2 (talk) 13:27, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Missing comma in historical C sample
The historical hello world program, adapted from Programming in C: A Tutorial, is missing the canonical comma after hello, which is demonstrated in the tutorial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.168.241.168 (talk) 05:59, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Full listings or not?
I notice for the Java example a full listing is given, including class declarations etc. Then for other others (with the exception of assembly) this is not the case. I am guessing full code listings would be more useful and interesting to people :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.11.218.214 (talk) 14:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * They're at List of Hello world program examples. --McGeddon (talk) 11:18, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Examples
If one looks at the history of this article, one sees that it was at one point an utterly unnavigable mess of mostly non-working pieces of example code. The existance of one example in a particular language quickly resulted in fans of other languages wanting their own represented, and the entire thing spiralled utterly out of control. It was repeatedly culled, and each time someone came back and reinserted "just one example" or "just a few". But it never would stay "just a few".

The result was a broadbased consensus at that time to move the entirely too huge list of hello world examples to wikibooks, and keep only two examples: the original (in B) and the first widely known (in C). In order to keep well-intentioned editors from putting back in their pet languages, an explicit hidden comment was inserted into the text.

Now, it appears that in the years since (it really has been that long) someone moved the Wikibooks content to a WP article, List of Hello world program examples, and some of those examples were placed here. And the list became long, and it was again culled. And then it became long again, and I have just removed it again.

User:Andy Dingley did not exactly revert my removal: instead he came back and replaced "some" examples, producing an even longer section than the one I removed. I think this is not appropriate, given in particular the list of hello world programs article, which any user wanting specific examples can obviously peruse.

The other general concern I have is about code in Wiki articles. In my opinion, the wiki is not a good place for code snippets, because they invariably end up being "corrected" or "refactored" by persons who are not necessarily terribly competent when it comes to programming. The result is that after some time has passed, many of the examples in fact end up not working properly.

There are numerous sites and resources on the internet with huge lists of hello world programs and I see no reason why we should not link them here. But putting them on WP is wrongheaded. Consensus for many years was that we have no examples on this page other than the original two. Has consensus changed? Eniagrom (talk) 11:18, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

 * I would agree that "a mess of examples" is not a good thing. If you read the history and the talk: archives here, you might also note that I'm one of the editors who has been most active in removing such.
 * "a broadbased consensus" [to only] "B & C". Where?  There has been no such consensus.
 * This article does not need a list of "my favourite language", but at the same time it does need true examples. Not as language samples, but as examples of what a Hello World program looks like, for the benefit of the general principle. Readers of this article need to see what such a program looks like, and (most importantly) why one would bother. Hello World in JavaScript is trivial - why would any programmer even care to write it? It makes much more sense for more difficult languages like assembler.
 * My edit was to re-add examples for JavaScript, Java and Assembler. I have no particular attachment to these languages but JavaScript is contemporary and as simple as it gets, Java is contemporary and demonstrates how a modern language might still need to be more verbose. Assembler is obscure these days, but it highlights just how much work can still be needed to get Hello World up and running. I believe these three limited examples convey something of value at the level of a general article on Hello World and thus belong here.
 * You also removed the note on the Arduino and the use of non-text output devices in the Hello World context. Why?
 * Finally, I'd point out that it's not Bold - Revert - Edit war again because I KNOW I'M RIGHT. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

 * I don't actually agree that examples add anything whatsoever to the article, but for the purposes of discussion, let's assume that I did. We are then in a position where we pick a few languages, a few examples, as representative. How do you decide which languages to choose? Maybe you WP:DGAF and just choose a few arbitrarily, trying to get good coverage of programming lengths or styles or what have you. Good on you! But then someone who is less DGAFy than you comes along and wonders, why is Java here, but not C#? Why is C here, but not C++? Or D?

 * The thing about the previous consensus -- and it was a consensus, as evidenced by the block comment that has been in the article text ever since we all made the decision years ago, and which has been mostly the status quo for this article since that time -- is that it was a hard and fast rule that was perhaps too limiting, but it was fair. The two examples had *objective* justification. When someone asked why C and not C++ -- as they did, you can see it in talk page archive -- there was an actual response to be had. C was the first widely published example that launched the general trend. Similarly so for B: it was not widely published but it is the first extant example. No one could accuse the editors of playing language favoritism. We weren't choosing Java over C# for political reasons -- and among programmers, language choice is nearly always political -- and so there was never any need to justify that decision.

 * Because there is no objective reason to prefer Java over C#, there is no objective reason to complain when someone adds a C# example. The list of examples has just increased by one. Since you DGAF, maybe you remove the Java example, but then a Java affecionado will ask the same question in the opposite direction. This is not idle supposition on my part: the current content of the list of hello world program examples is a derivative of what this page used to look like. It had several versions of Hello World in x86 assembler, because why should MASM syntax be better than TASM, or NASM, or GAS? It gets out of hand. It did not come under control until we decided to be serious about not letting anyone put their pet language in.

 * This is why, even if I agreed that a few choice examples improve the article, I would be forced to say no to adding them. But I don't actually think they add anything. I would not hold this opinion if repositories of hello world examples were difficult to find on-line. But they aren't. Much to my own chagrin, WP currently has a huge list of them at another article. And even if it didn't, there are many, many, many sites with lists of code in every single language under the sun already out there. And better maintained and spam-free repositories of such programs can even be linked here, at no cost to us.Eniagrom (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have no objection, other than a weak one to pointless churn, if someone replaces a comparable Java example with a C## one. Adding another example though would be a problem as it would fail to add any value from the standpoint of this article (Java practice is largely comparable to C##). You seem to have little faith in WP's ability to maintain an article. You claim that code can't be kept valid, you claim that having one example leads to a plethora. What evidence do you have for this, or that they can't be pruned? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

 * I think I covered all of this in my previous comment quite adequately. You may not care which, but many programmers definitely do. They will object to one over the other, and growth or churn will be the only ways to prevent warring over what is included and what isn't. As for evidence, as I believe I stated, I have this article's entire history. Do you want diffs?Eniagrom (talk) 13:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Picture is not representative
Hello world is essentially supposed to be the simplest program in a given language. The one in the picture goes beyond its remit and is not representative. I'll be back with a counterproposal if no objections. 218.221.177.69 (talk) 03:16, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. I agree. It needs cropping. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 12:11, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. 121.103.176.27 (talk) 11:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

I've replaced it with File:TI_BASIC_HELLO_WORLD.png, which is the simplest, clearest example I could find on Commons. --McGeddon (talk) 14:16, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * hi. You know, I find it extremely strange that an article chokeful of source code samples must also show an image that has a source code in it.

 * Best regards,
 * Codename Lisa (talk) 01:33, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

 * It is a bit strange, but there should probably be a code example in the lead somewhere to convey just how simple "one of the simplest programs possible" is in practice, so that the lead can stand alone. A code example in text and a less oblique output photo would also work. --McGeddon (talk) 07:50, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

 * No, it is totally strange. Lead section is supposed to be a simplified summary of the entire article and since source codes are gobbledegook to most people, they mustn't be in the lead, image or not.

 * Best regards,
 * Codename Lisa (talk) 08:39, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Good point. But in the absence of any simple, clear, thumbnail-legible screenshots of a hello-world program's output on Commons, I think this may be our best illustration of what a hello world program looks like on a screen, for now. (The PSP image further down is non-standard and cluttered, and the machine-tool photo too oblique.) I'll see if I can find anything better out there. --McGeddon (talk) 09:02, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Oh, don't you worry about that. I can create one easily enough. I have JavaScript example ready. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 10:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. There is also File:Msgbox.png. Codename Lisa (talk) 11:19, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

 * The caption ('A "Hello World" program...') is not correct because the image shows the output from a program. I'm afraid I don't have a suggestion about fixing the caption as I'm not convinced that showing "Hello World" is very useful. Johnuniq (talk) 10:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I choose that caption because it matches the article's lead. The lead defines such a thing as 'a "Hello world" program'. Program itself is an abstract concept; only its output or source code can be captured. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 11:19, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, I disagree that the pic in the lead shouldn't show any code. The article is about a program, not an application. Showing window with a string and an OK button is meaningless and not representative of most hello world programs, which would have a command-line interface. Lastly, I object to the claim that a code example is gobbledegook in this context. This is an article about programming, not about end-user applications. So I'd rather have File:TI_BASIC_HELLO_WORLD.png. 31.185.238.99 (talk) 09:22, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

A program is an application by definition. It doesn't matter how simplistic or how extensive the coding is, it's still an application. And I agree with not having a picture of an example "Hello World" program being shown. Showing the code for the benefit of the non-programmer who reads the entry won't make them understand the point of the Hello World program any better. And for those of us who have written the program in a class, it wouldn't have any further benefit.

--RayGhost-Use way as no way; Use limitation as no limitation 19:06, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Purpose section should have major modification
The first paragraph is decent enough. But the rest of the paragraphs.. they don't make much sense to me. In the programming and computer systems courses I've had, I've never heard the Hello World program used as a "sanity test" for the compiler and system. Yes..the section needs a major modification in not just accurate sourcing and just how the section is worded.

--RayGhost-Use way as no way; Use limitation as no limitation 19:06, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

possible source of "hello, world" quote
Hi, maybe a possible source for the "hello, world" wording could be added? --Kjoonlee 18:48, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

 * Memory is dim now. What I do remember is that I had seen a cartoon that showed an egg and a chick and the chick was saying, “Hello, world”.

The book "The C Programming Language" of 1978 cannot be the source, since it is written there: "The First program to write is the same for all languages: Print the words   hello, world". It is clear then that the hello world has been employed before User talk:nandobike 12 May 2019.

Criticism
Few criticism has been done to this example, but Mark Guzdial, Elliot Soloway said in Teaching the Nintendo Generation to Program that the example is not engaging enough and that while apt for a time of mainly text as main media, is not suited for more current times:

We have used “Hello, World!” for the past 25 years because text was the medium that was easiest to manipulate with the given technology. Today’s technology can manipulate sound, graphics, and video with the same responsiveness and ease. Today’s technology produces the media that “kids these days” are consuming. These same kids can produce their kind of media using today’s technology. In fact, they want to. And they’ll learn programming to do it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.29.224.163 (talk) 14:09, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Move Proposal (better title: Hello World Program)
The title ''"Hello, World!" program'' is an extravagant title choice; and practice shows, no one ever keeps up with this lengthy writing. It would be typographically just as legit to go with Hello World Program instead. Hello World is the name of the program; thus it's the Hello World Program. This adheres to a common standard: The fact that "Hello, World!" is the computer string originally used might matter for non-human interpreters, but this article is intended for the human eye.
 * Twin Towers, not Twin towers,
 * Hail Mary, not “Hail Mary”.

Currently the typography of the article is messed up, and typos will keep coming. This is mainly due to this weird choice of title. Especially when people get tired of the quotations (which are hard to read anyway), the remaining comma leads to full chaos.

Solution: rename everything consistently to Hello World Program; ''"Hello, World!" program'' can redirect. — Recompile (talk) 23:54, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose per both COMMONNAME (the name was set 40 years ago) and for the usual capitalisation rules. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose I think the name is OK, since it is the original name.  The redirects without symbols already exist and they help us to find this article easily when necessary.  --Diego Queiroz (talk) 13:20, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:18, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello World Brian Kernighan 1974.jpg

Origin before the origin
I think most links and information available on the www, including wikipedia, mentions Brian Kernighan as the one who made it popular. But I also read that this was in use in literature or elsewhere before? How did these two words actually come to be used in that way? It would be nice if wikipedia could explain any build up towards the "hello world" program in general, since that is usually what is done by many people when they learn a new programming language, so this may be useful to know for them as well one day. Specifically I came here to wonder why "world" is greeted and not anything else. Edit: To further clarify, the "hello" part appears trivial to me, but why was "world" chosen and not another word? For example, why not "Hello there!" or something like this. 2A02:8388:1604:F600:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 12:11, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:"Hello, World!" program/Archive 1