2 Hello, World
Meredith Broussard · 2018
To understand what computers don't do, we need to start by understanding what computers do well and how they work. To do this, we'll write a simple computer program. Every time a programmer learns a new language, she does the same thing first: she writes a “Hello, world” program. If you study programming at coding boot camp or at Stanford or at community college or online, you'll likely be asked to write one. “Hello, world” is a reference to the first program in the iconic 1978 book The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, in which the reader learns how to create a program (using the C programming language) to print “Hello, world.” Kernighan and Ritchie worked at Bell Labs, the think tank that is to modern computer science what Hershey is to chocolate. (AT&T Bell Labs was also kind enough to employ me for several years.) A huge number of innovations originated there, including the laser and the microwave and Unix (which Ritchie also helped develop, in addition to the C programming language). C got its name because it is the language that the Bell Labs crew invented after they wrote a language called “B.” C++, a still-popular language, and its cousin C# are both descendants of C.