Hello, World!

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 · 6 min read

I started on Comfortably Numbered a couple of months ago, because I needed a blog. I needed a blog to dump interesting thoughts and I wanted a place besides GitHub to show off projects. I wanted, for once, to write industrial-strength code that would face real people instead of fellow hackers. When you write code for a hacker, you write the bare minimum for it to work. So I ended up obsessing insanely about the design, typography, and optimization of this site. Pretty much everything except the content.

I thought I'd present a cool non-trivial Hello, World program here. But all the cool languages have really boring Hello, Worlds, and I have a natural revulsion to a language whose most basic Hello, World is more than a line long—C variants, Java, etc. So here's an assortment of my favorite Hello, World programs.

echo 'print "console.log(\"print \\\"echo Hello, World\\\"\")"' | ruby | node | python | bash

Here's a merry (pure) CSS3D welcome. It's essentially just a bunch of animations with 3D transforms, but the end result is pretty impressive. It's also overkill, which is the best only way to show off.

While we're feeling masochistic, here's Hello, World in Malbolge (the first working Malbolge program took 2 years and a LISP program to find, so don't feel too bad if you don't get it right away):

('&%:9]!~}|z2Vxwv-,POqponl$Hjig%eB@@>}=<M:9wv6WsU2T|nm-,jcL(I&%$#"
`CB]V?Tx<uVtT`Rpo3NlF.Jh++FdbCBA@?]!~|4XzyTT43Qsqq(Lnmkj"Fhg${z@>

If you're on a Mac, it's always nice to hear a human voice (or a reasonable approximation thereof). The say command is a very easy way to annoy your sysadmin. Try putting a say command in a shared computer's .profile—perhaps along the lines of Where have you hidden the body?.

$ say -v Zarvox "Hello, World"

Piet's Hello, World is pretty, self-referential, and a nice avatar for the aspiring esolang geek.

I'd post a Hello, World program in Whitespace, but I decided to save myself the effort and dump an empty box below. Use your imagination.

The following is a Hello, World program. Honest.

Romeo, a young man with a remarkable patience.
Juliet, a likewise young woman of remarkable grace.
Ophelia, a remarkable woman much in dispute with Hamlet.
Hamlet, the flatterer of Andersen Insulting A/S.

                   Act I: Hamlet's insults and flattery.
                   Scene I: The insulting of Romeo.
[Enter Hamlet and Romeo]
Hamlet:
You lying stupid fatherless big smelly half-witted coward! You are as
stupid as the difference between a handsome rich brave hero and thyself!
Speak your mind!
You are as brave as the sum of your fat little stuffed misused dusty
old rotten codpiece and a beautiful fair warm peaceful sunny summer's
day. You are as healthy as the difference between the sum of the
sweetest reddest rose and my father and yourself! Speak your mind!
You are as cowardly as the sum of yourself and the difference
between a big mighty proud kingdom and a horse. Speak your mind.
Speak your mind!
[Exit Romeo]
                   Scene II: The praising of Juliet.
[Enter Juliet]
Hamlet:
Thou art as sweet as the sum of the sum of Romeo and his horse and his
black cat! Speak thy mind!
[Exit Juliet]
                   Scene III: The praising of Ophelia.
[Enter Ophelia]
Hamlet:
Thou art as lovely as the product of a large rural town and my amazing
bottomless embroidered purse. Speak thy mind!
Thou art as loving as the product of the bluest clearest sweetest sky
and the sum of a squirrel and a white horse. Thou art as beautiful as
the difference between Juliet and thyself. Speak thy mind!
[Exeunt Ophelia and Hamlet]

                   Act II: Behind Hamlet's back.
                   Scene I: Romeo and Juliet's conversation.
[Enter Romeo and Juliet]
Romeo:
Speak your mind. You are as worried as the sum of yourself and the
difference between my small smooth hamster and my nose. Speak your
mind!
Juliet:
Speak YOUR mind! You are as bad as Hamlet! You are as small as the
difference between the square of the difference between my little pony
and your big hairy hound and the cube of your sorry little
codpiece. Speak your mind!
[Exit Romeo]
                   Scene II: Juliet and Ophelia's conversation.
[Enter Ophelia]
Juliet:
Thou art as good as the quotient between Romeo and the sum of a small
furry animal and a leech. Speak your mind!
Ophelia:
Thou art as disgusting as the quotient between Romeo and twice the
difference between a mistletoe and an oozing infected blister! Speak
your mind!
[Exeunt]

And finally, FiM++ looks like an average letter to Grandma:

Dear Princess Celestia:Hello World!

Today I learned how to say hello world!
I said "Hello, World!"!
That's all about how to say hello world.

Your faithful student, Kyli Rouge.

(Other people, however, write their letters in LOLCODE.)

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE