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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
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Subject: Re: Why "Hello World" as a first exercise?
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2021 02:57:35 -0700
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Richard Iswara <haujekchifan@gmail.com> writes:
> Why is it most of the courses of introduction to programming or
> programming language use a "Hello World" kind of program as a demo or
> first exercise?

The actual exercise is to (if necessary) get the compiler and tools
installed, make the source file, invoke the compiler, and run the
executable.  Depending on the environment, this can be quite a serious
challenge.  Going from there to a more complicated program is simple by
comparison.

I believe the "hello world" meme started with Brian Kernighan's
1970s-era tutorial for the then-new C language, but I could be wrong
about that.