WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.220 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, I want 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:04.919 you to picture something really specific. Okay, 00:00:04.980 --> 00:00:07.219 what are we picturing? Picture a black screen, 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:11.560 a blinking cursor, and you are staring at it, 00:00:11.619 --> 00:00:14.919 about to type the very first thing into a totally 00:00:14.919 --> 00:00:18.160 new system. I know exactly where this is going. 00:00:18.280 --> 00:00:20.420 Right. It's a ritual that is so ingrained in 00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:22.640 the technological world that we almost never 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:25.980 stop to ask why we do it. It's usually just two 00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:28.960 words, maybe a comma, and almost always an exclamation 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:32.289 mark. Hello, world. Exactly. The most famous 00:00:32.289 --> 00:00:35.130 phrase in computing. If you have ever tried to 00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:37.729 learn to code, whether it was Python last week 00:00:37.729 --> 00:00:40.509 or basic 30 years ago, this was almost certainly 00:00:40.509 --> 00:00:42.369 the very first thing you built. Oh, without a 00:00:42.369 --> 00:00:44.630 doubt. And it seems deceptively simple. You type 00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:46.789 a line, the screen talks back to you. Mission 00:00:46.789 --> 00:00:49.509 accomplished. It feels simple, sure. But that 00:00:49.509 --> 00:00:52.009 simplicity masks a massive amount of complexity. 00:00:52.590 --> 00:00:55.579 Hello, world isn't just a greeting. It's a historical 00:00:55.579 --> 00:00:58.320 artifact. It's a rigorous stress test for your 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:01.359 entire system. And in many ways, it's the fundamental 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:04.700 handshake between human and machine. And that's 00:01:04.700 --> 00:01:07.430 the mission for this deep dive. We aren't just 00:01:07.430 --> 00:01:09.670 looking at the syntax or how to type the code. 00:01:09.950 --> 00:01:12.689 We are going to unpack the history, which involves 00:01:12.689 --> 00:01:17.049 everything from Bell Labs to a 1950s radio DJ. 00:01:17.310 --> 00:01:19.930 And we're going to look at why, 50 years later, 00:01:20.109 --> 00:01:22.989 this is still the default sanity check for millions 00:01:22.989 --> 00:01:25.689 of developers. It really is the cultural baseline 00:01:25.689 --> 00:01:28.409 of the entire industry. It's the one thing almost 00:01:28.409 --> 00:01:31.109 every programmer has in common, regardless of 00:01:31.109 --> 00:01:33.290 what language they speak or what era they grew 00:01:33.290 --> 00:01:35.189 up in. So let's start with the definition, just 00:01:35.189 --> 00:01:37.090 so everyone is on the same page. same page. When 00:01:37.090 --> 00:01:39.450 we say a hello world program, strictly speaking, 00:01:39.730 --> 00:01:42.109 what are we actually talking about? At its core, 00:01:42.230 --> 00:01:45.510 it is the absolute simplest valid program you 00:01:45.510 --> 00:01:48.250 can write in a given language that produces a 00:01:48.250 --> 00:01:50.790 side effect. A side effect meaning? Specifically, 00:01:50.829 --> 00:01:53.650 outputting that text to a display device, usually 00:01:53.650 --> 00:01:56.159 the console. It does nothing else. It doesn't 00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:58.780 calculate. It doesn't take input. It just speaks. 00:01:58.939 --> 00:02:00.959 It just screams into the void and the void answers. 00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:04.219 Now, I think most people, myself included, assume 00:02:04.219 --> 00:02:06.180 this phrase just sort of emerged like it was 00:02:06.180 --> 00:02:09.509 always there. But looking at the sources we have, 00:02:09.629 --> 00:02:12.870 there is a very specific lineage here. We can 00:02:12.870 --> 00:02:16.030 trace it back to one specific book. We can. The 00:02:16.030 --> 00:02:18.750 moment it solidified as the tradition was 1978. 00:02:19.349 --> 00:02:21.389 That's when Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie 00:02:21.389 --> 00:02:24.009 published the C programming language. Which is 00:02:24.009 --> 00:02:27.169 known as KNR. Right, KNR. It is basically the 00:02:27.169 --> 00:02:30.009 Bible of computing. C is the ancestor of almost 00:02:30.009 --> 00:02:33.530 all modern language. You know, C++, Java, Python, 00:02:33.650 --> 00:02:37.009 they all owe amounts of debt to C. Yeah. In that 00:02:37.009 --> 00:02:39.710 book, the very first example Kernighan used to 00:02:39.710 --> 00:02:42.030 show how the language worked was a program that 00:02:42.030 --> 00:02:44.729 printed hello, world in all lowercase. And because 00:02:44.729 --> 00:02:47.270 everyone learned from that exact book, everyone 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:49.610 just copied the example, it became the default. 00:02:49.629 --> 00:02:51.710 Precisely. It became a meme before we even really 00:02:51.710 --> 00:02:54.169 had the word meme. Right. But, and this is where 00:02:54.169 --> 00:02:56.250 the history gets murky and really interesting, 00:02:56.449 --> 00:02:58.330 Kernighan didn't actually invent it for that 00:02:58.330 --> 00:03:00.909 book. He was recycling his own material. This 00:03:00.909 --> 00:03:02.930 is the part I found fascinating in our research. 00:03:03.370 --> 00:03:06.069 We have to go back further into the depths of 00:03:06.069 --> 00:03:09.169 Bell Labs in the early 70s. Right. If you dig 00:03:09.169 --> 00:03:11.870 into the internal memos of Bell Labs, you find 00:03:11.870 --> 00:03:15.389 a tutorial from 1974, also by Kernighan, called 00:03:15.389 --> 00:03:18.550 Programming in C, A Tutorial. The phrase is right 00:03:18.550 --> 00:03:21.210 there. But if you keep digging, you hit 1972. 00:03:21.770 --> 00:03:25.770 Yes. 1972. Before C, there was B. The language 00:03:25.770 --> 00:03:28.650 era. Exactly. And Kernighan wrote a tutorial 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:32.139 introduction to the language B. That is the earliest 00:03:32.139 --> 00:03:34.819 documented instance we have of code being used 00:03:34.819 --> 00:03:38.099 to print hello world. But the context in the 00:03:38.099 --> 00:03:40.620 B tutorial was totally different, wasn't it? 00:03:40.659 --> 00:03:42.900 It wasn't just a friendly say hi exercise. It 00:03:42.900 --> 00:03:45.419 was solving a pretty weird technical problem. 00:03:45.639 --> 00:03:48.219 It was. This is a great example of how hardware 00:03:48.219 --> 00:03:50.740 limitations actually shape our culture. So the 00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:53.199 B language had a quirk. It stored text and variables, 00:03:53.419 --> 00:03:55.620 but those variables were bound by the physical 00:03:55.620 --> 00:03:57.280 architecture of the computer they were running 00:03:57.280 --> 00:03:59.300 on. Which was usually what back then? Usually 00:03:59.300 --> 00:04:01.919 something like a PDP -7. A variable in B could 00:04:01.919 --> 00:04:04.340 only hold four ASCII characters at a time. Four 00:04:04.340 --> 00:04:06.800 characters. That's it. That's it. So you couldn't 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.479 just say print hello world. The variable memory 00:04:09.479 --> 00:04:11.400 wasn't big enough to pull the whole sentence. 00:04:11.639 --> 00:04:13.860 So how did he actually get it to print? He had 00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:15.879 to chop it up. The code example was actually 00:04:15.879 --> 00:04:18.040 demonstrating how to string together external 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:21.360 variables. Oh, wow. Yeah. One variable held heli, 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.879 the next held O comma space W, the next ORLD, 00:04:24.959 --> 00:04:29.000 and so on. That is wild. So the Hello World tradition 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:31.420 didn't start as a greeting. It started as a hack 00:04:31.420 --> 00:04:34.060 to show how to glue string fragments together 00:04:34.060 --> 00:04:36.600 because the computers were literally too weak 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:38.879 to handle the whole phrase at once. Exactly. 00:04:38.939 --> 00:04:41.259 It was a demonstration of managing memory constraints. 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:44.040 We've kept the phrase, but we've largely forgotten 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.220 that the original lesson was about the limitations 00:04:46.220 --> 00:04:48.560 of the hardware. Now, speaking of the phrase 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.439 itself, why Hello World? Why not just test or... 00:04:52.120 --> 00:04:54.279 It works. Yeah. This brings us to the really 00:04:54.279 --> 00:04:57.740 unlikely connection to a New York radio DJ. Right. 00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:00.100 William B. Williams. I love this detail because 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:01.920 it takes us out of the computer lab entirely. 00:05:02.339 --> 00:05:05.800 So Williams was a DJ on WNEW in New York in the 00:05:05.800 --> 00:05:08.920 1950s. And he had this signature sign on. He 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:10.620 would turn on the mic and say, hello, world. 00:05:10.839 --> 00:05:13.579 And Kernighan has admitted in interviews that 00:05:13.579 --> 00:05:15.879 this was likely rattling around in his subconscious. 00:05:16.439 --> 00:05:18.899 He remembers seeing a cartoon of a chick coming 00:05:18.899 --> 00:05:21.639 out of an egg saying it. or hearing it on the 00:05:21.639 --> 00:05:24.379 radio. So it wasn't on purpose? It wasn't a deliberate, 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:27.860 I am quoting this DJ moment, no. But it shows 00:05:27.860 --> 00:05:30.000 that computer science doesn't happen in a vacuum. 00:05:30.579 --> 00:05:34.279 The pop culture of 1950s radio totally seeped 00:05:34.279 --> 00:05:36.699 into the sterile environment of Bell Labs. It 00:05:36.699 --> 00:05:39.000 adds such a human texture to it. Every time a 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.279 new kid in a coding boot camp types that line 00:05:41.279 --> 00:05:45.459 today, they are unknowingly echoing a 1950s radio 00:05:45.459 --> 00:05:47.920 bit. It's a really nice reminder that code is 00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:50.420 written by humans. Although, to be totally thorough, 00:05:50.620 --> 00:05:53.399 I should mention the jargon file claims a 1967 00:05:53.399 --> 00:05:56.860 origin with the BCPL language. Okay. But the 00:05:56.860 --> 00:05:58.879 Kernighan lineage at Bell Labs is the one we 00:05:58.879 --> 00:06:00.680 can actually prove with physical paper trails. 00:06:00.939 --> 00:06:03.220 Fair enough. So, we know where it comes from, 00:06:03.259 --> 00:06:05.480 but we don't use the B language anymore. We don't 00:06:05.480 --> 00:06:07.560 have four character limits on our variables today. 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:10.139 Why does this persist? Why is it still the very 00:06:10.139 --> 00:06:12.240 first step? This brings us to the concept of 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:14.759 the sanity check. I hear this term used a lot 00:06:14.759 --> 00:06:18.060 by engineers. Let's do a sanity check. What does 00:06:18.060 --> 00:06:20.980 it actually imply in this context? Think about 00:06:20.980 --> 00:06:23.560 what actually needs to happen for code to run. 00:06:24.079 --> 00:06:27.019 When you sit down at a computer and type print 00:06:27.019 --> 00:06:30.579 hello world, you aren't just typing words. You 00:06:30.579 --> 00:06:33.040 are activating a massive invisible industrial 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:35.720 pipeline. It feels instant to me though. I hit 00:06:35.720 --> 00:06:38.360 run and the text just appears. It feels instant, 00:06:38.420 --> 00:06:41.360 but physically it's a miracle. How so? Well, 00:06:41.459 --> 00:06:44.060 you need an editor to accept the text. You need 00:06:44.060 --> 00:06:46.600 a compiler to translate that text into machine 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:49.199 code, the binary that the processor can actually 00:06:49.199 --> 00:06:51.540 understand. You need a linker to grab the standard 00:06:51.540 --> 00:06:53.319 library so the computer knows what print even 00:06:53.319 --> 00:06:55.399 means. Right. You need the operating system to 00:06:55.399 --> 00:06:58.060 give you permission to access the screen. And 00:06:58.060 --> 00:06:59.920 finally, the hardware driver has to literally 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:02.360 light up the pixels. Okay, so it's huge chain 00:07:02.360 --> 00:07:04.839 reaction. It's a Rube Goldberg machine. Yeah. 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:07.180 And if any single part of that chain is broken, 00:07:07.319 --> 00:07:09.560 if the compiler is the wrong version, if the 00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:11.660 path variables aren't set, if the permissions 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:14.720 are wrong, the program crashes. So Hello World 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:17.660 isn't testing my ability to code. It's testing 00:07:17.660 --> 00:07:20.740 the environment. Bingo. It validates the workflow. 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:24.519 If Hello World fails, you don't have a coding 00:07:24.519 --> 00:07:26.680 problem, you have a configuration problem. That 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:29.240 makes so much sense. It saves you from debugging 00:07:29.240 --> 00:07:32.259 a really complex algorithm when the issue is 00:07:32.259 --> 00:07:34.160 actually just that you didn't install the language 00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:36.139 correctly. It's like tapping the microphone before 00:07:36.139 --> 00:07:38.279 you start singing. You aren't testing your voice. 00:07:38.339 --> 00:07:40.620 You're testing the sound system. That's the perfect 00:07:40.620 --> 00:07:43.560 analogy. In fact, this utility is so universally 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:47.379 recognized that Linux systems, specifically Debian 00:07:47.379 --> 00:07:50.540 and Ubuntu, have formalized it. I saw this in 00:07:50.540 --> 00:07:53.139 the notes. There is a literal package called 00:07:53.139 --> 00:07:56.680 simply hello. Yes. You can type apt -get install 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.420 hello. It downloads a program from the GNU project 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:01.439 that just prints a friendly greeting. Why would 00:08:01.439 --> 00:08:04.160 anyone ever need to download that? It's not for 00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:06.480 the user to say hi. It's for the developers. 00:08:07.310 --> 00:08:09.930 It serves as the sanity check for the package 00:08:09.930 --> 00:08:12.790 manager system itself. Oh, I see. It's a perfect, 00:08:12.850 --> 00:08:15.670 compliant example of how to structure a software 00:08:15.670 --> 00:08:18.050 package. If you were building a new installer 00:08:18.050 --> 00:08:20.629 or package manager, you test it with Hello, because 00:08:20.629 --> 00:08:22.490 you know the code itself is totally bug -free. 00:08:22.649 --> 00:08:25.810 So if it fails... If it fails, you know your 00:08:25.810 --> 00:08:28.050 installer is broken. It's the control group of 00:08:28.050 --> 00:08:30.310 the experiment. Exactly. It's the stable baseline. 00:08:30.839 --> 00:08:32.659 I want to pivot to something that I think is 00:08:32.659 --> 00:08:35.659 really useful for anyone looking at picking up 00:08:35.659 --> 00:08:38.220 a new language. There is this metric we came 00:08:38.220 --> 00:08:41.519 across called TTHW. Yes, the time to hello world. 00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:44.269 It sounds like a race. It effectively is. It 00:08:44.269 --> 00:08:46.750 measures approachability. The stopwatch starts 00:08:46.750 --> 00:08:49.110 when you sit down to learn a language, and it 00:08:49.110 --> 00:08:51.629 stops when you successfully see text on the screen. 00:08:51.830 --> 00:08:55.549 Okay. It is a fantastic way to judge how scary 00:08:55.549 --> 00:08:58.730 or complex a programming language actually is. 00:08:58.909 --> 00:09:00.850 So let's compare a few to get a feel for this. 00:09:00.990 --> 00:09:02.850 Let's look at the easy end of the spectrum first. 00:09:03.250 --> 00:09:07.649 Python. Python is the absolute king of low TTHW. 00:09:07.769 --> 00:09:10.389 You install it, you open a file, and you type 00:09:10.389 --> 00:09:13.659 print hello world. One line. No boilerplate, 00:09:13.799 --> 00:09:16.019 no complex setup. So the barrier to entry is 00:09:16.019 --> 00:09:18.659 basically zero. Right. It's designed to be readable. 00:09:18.860 --> 00:09:21.340 It wants you to succeed immediately. Now contrast 00:09:21.340 --> 00:09:25.600 that with C++. C++ is notoriously not that. C++ 00:09:25.600 --> 00:09:28.539 is industrial grade. To say hello, you can't 00:09:28.539 --> 00:09:30.559 just say print. You need to include a library 00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:33.580 called Iostream. You need to use a namespace. 00:09:33.860 --> 00:09:37.139 You have to declare a main function because C++. 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:40.480 demands to know specifically where the program 00:09:40.480 --> 00:09:42.879 starts. Wow, that's a lot. And you have to use 00:09:42.879 --> 00:09:45.860 standard count and insertion operators, those 00:09:45.860 --> 00:09:48.240 little angle brackets, and you usually need to 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:50.240 return an integer at the end to tell the operating 00:09:50.240 --> 00:09:53.120 system, I finished correctly. That is a massive 00:09:53.120 --> 00:09:56.799 amount of overhead just to say hi. It is, but 00:09:56.799 --> 00:09:58.639 it teaches you something fundamental about the 00:09:58.639 --> 00:10:01.820 language. It tells you that C++ gives you manual 00:10:01.820 --> 00:10:04.440 control over everything. Input streams, memory, 00:10:04.740 --> 00:10:08.899 exit codes. So high TTHW usually means high power, 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:12.379 high complexity. Exactly. It forces you to understand 00:10:12.379 --> 00:10:14.480 the structure before you get the reward. And 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:16.879 then there's Go. The notes mention Go does something 00:10:16.879 --> 00:10:19.620 pretty interesting with its Hello World. Go is 00:10:19.620 --> 00:10:22.019 a modern language from Google. Their tutorial 00:10:22.019 --> 00:10:24.240 example doesn't just print English. It prints 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:26.700 English, Chinese, and Japanese characters all 00:10:26.700 --> 00:10:29.460 at once. Total show -offs. A little bit. But 00:10:29.460 --> 00:10:31.600 it's highly strategic. They are demonstrating 00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:34.240 that Go has Unicode support built right into 00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:36.860 the core. Why is that a big deal? In the old 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:39.720 days, like with C, handling foreign characters 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:42.889 was an absolute nightmare. Go is saying... Look, 00:10:43.029 --> 00:10:45.929 we are modern. We handle the whole world right 00:10:45.929 --> 00:10:48.149 out of the box. No, we have to talk about the 00:10:48.149 --> 00:10:51.289 absolute nightmare scenario. The time to hello 00:10:51.289 --> 00:10:54.929 world champion of the universe. Malbolge. Ah, 00:10:54.929 --> 00:10:57.330 yes, Malbolge. Wade, I'd never heard of this 00:10:57.330 --> 00:10:59.970 until we looked at these sources. The TTHW was 00:10:59.970 --> 00:11:03.110 two years. That is correct. Two entire years. 00:11:03.330 --> 00:11:06.009 How is that even possible? Malbolge is what we 00:11:06.009 --> 00:11:09.070 call an esoteric programming language. It wasn't 00:11:09.070 --> 00:11:11.610 designed to be used. It was designed as a challenge. 00:11:12.009 --> 00:11:14.669 Or maybe a sick joke. The joke. It's named after 00:11:14.669 --> 00:11:16.889 the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. 00:11:17.110 --> 00:11:20.029 The entire design goal was to make it as difficult 00:11:20.029 --> 00:11:22.009 as possible for a human being to write code. 00:11:22.210 --> 00:11:24.629 So what makes it so hard? Is it just weird symbols 00:11:24.629 --> 00:11:26.889 or what? It's much worse than that. The commands 00:11:26.889 --> 00:11:28.690 actually change depending on where they are in 00:11:28.690 --> 00:11:31.049 memory. Wait, really? Yes. The code modifies 00:11:31.049 --> 00:11:34.429 itself as it runs. The logic is ternary, so base 00:11:34.429 --> 00:11:37.669 three rather than binary. It is completely hostile 00:11:37.669 --> 00:11:40.179 to human reasoning. So the two -year delay, that 00:11:40.179 --> 00:11:41.840 wasn't just someone procrastinating. That was 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:44.379 someone actively trying to figure it out. It 00:11:44.379 --> 00:11:48.159 took two years for the very first valid Hello 00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:52.159 World program to appear. And here's the kicker. 00:11:52.580 --> 00:11:56.049 A human didn't even write it. Really? Who did? 00:11:56.190 --> 00:11:58.610 A cryptographer had to write a completely separate 00:11:58.610 --> 00:12:02.450 program in Lisp, which is a smart logical language, 00:12:02.669 --> 00:12:05.750 to search through the combinations and basically 00:12:05.750 --> 00:12:08.470 discover the Malbolge code that would output 00:12:08.470 --> 00:12:11.169 the right text. So it was brute forced by another 00:12:11.169 --> 00:12:13.750 computer. Yes. That is the ultimate irony. The 00:12:13.750 --> 00:12:15.649 language is so hard that we literally needed 00:12:15.649 --> 00:12:18.149 machines to talk to it for us. And the output 00:12:18.149 --> 00:12:21.509 wasn't even perfect. It printed Hello World with 00:12:21.509 --> 00:12:24.159 totally weird capitalization. Because that was 00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:26.059 the absolute best the search algorithm could 00:12:26.059 --> 00:12:27.860 find. That's fantastic. It's the hello world 00:12:27.860 --> 00:12:30.220 from hell, literally. Literally. So we've talked 00:12:30.220 --> 00:12:32.840 a lot about text, but we are moving into a world 00:12:32.840 --> 00:12:35.779 where not everything is a command line. What 00:12:35.779 --> 00:12:37.399 happens to hello world when you don't even have 00:12:37.399 --> 00:12:39.860 a screen? This is where the concept adapts beautifully. 00:12:41.080 --> 00:12:44.120 It turns out, hello world isn't actually about 00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:46.779 text. It's about the simplest possible output. 00:12:49.259 --> 00:12:52.769 If you are an electrical engineer, working on 00:12:52.769 --> 00:12:55.049 an embedded system like a chip inside a microwave 00:12:55.049 --> 00:12:57.769 or a drone, you don't have a monitor. You just 00:12:57.769 --> 00:12:59.769 have the circuit board. Right. So the hell of 00:12:59.769 --> 00:13:01.730 a roll of hardware is the blinking LED. Like 00:13:01.730 --> 00:13:04.450 a little heartbeat. Exactly. If you can write 00:13:04.450 --> 00:13:06.750 code that makes a little light blink on and off 00:13:06.750 --> 00:13:09.590 once per second, you have proven everything you 00:13:09.590 --> 00:13:11.860 need to know. You've proven the power is on, 00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:14.179 the chip is reading your code, the clock timing 00:13:14.179 --> 00:13:17.000 is correct, and the physical output pin is properly 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:19.179 connected. It's the exact same sanity check, 00:13:19.299 --> 00:13:22.399 just with photons instead of pixels. We see this 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:25.320 in every domain. In 3D graphics, text is actually 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:27.759 really hard to render. You need fonts, textures, 00:13:27.919 --> 00:13:31.220 alignment, the huge pain. So in OpenGL or DirectX, 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:33.909 the sanity check is the hello triangle. Just 00:13:33.909 --> 00:13:35.769 a triangle. Just a bright, colorful triangle. 00:13:35.809 --> 00:13:37.850 If you see the triangle, your graphics driver 00:13:37.850 --> 00:13:39.909 is working. I saw a note in our research about 00:13:39.909 --> 00:13:42.110 the Excel programming language. They went a bit 00:13:42.110 --> 00:13:44.970 further than a triangle. Oh, Excel. Yeah, they 00:13:44.970 --> 00:13:47.649 show off a spinning 3D Earth. It's a bit of a 00:13:47.649 --> 00:13:50.450 flex, basically saying 3D is so native to our 00:13:50.450 --> 00:13:53.690 language that rendering a spinning globe is as 00:13:53.690 --> 00:13:56.529 easy as printing text. And then there's CNC machines, 00:13:56.870 --> 00:13:59.549 the big robotic drills. Their hello world is 00:13:59.549 --> 00:14:02.649 terrifyingly physical. Oh, absolutely. If you 00:14:02.649 --> 00:14:05.950 are programming a laser cutter or a CNC mill, 00:14:06.129 --> 00:14:09.549 the hello world is getting the machine to carve 00:14:09.549 --> 00:14:12.659 the words into a block of wood or plastic. Wow. 00:14:12.980 --> 00:14:15.879 It is the code physically manifesting in the 00:14:15.879 --> 00:14:18.559 real world. If you get that wrong, you don't 00:14:18.559 --> 00:14:20.720 just get an error message on a screen. You break 00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:22.659 a drill bit. Or cut a hole straight through your 00:14:22.659 --> 00:14:24.679 table. Exactly. It's high stakes Hello World. 00:14:24.899 --> 00:14:26.960 There is one group of programmers, though, who 00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:30.039 apparently absolutely hate Hello World, the functional 00:14:30.039 --> 00:14:32.879 programming crowd. Why do they have a beef with 00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:35.139 a friendly greeting? This gets a little philosophical. 00:14:35.789 --> 00:14:38.009 Functional languages, things like Haskell, ML, 00:14:38.230 --> 00:14:40.830 or Lisp, treat programming like pure mathematics. 00:14:41.129 --> 00:14:43.250 You put a number in, you get a number out. They 00:14:43.250 --> 00:14:45.970 highly prioritize purity. And printing text isn't 00:14:45.970 --> 00:14:48.830 pure? No, because it's a side effect. Define 00:14:48.830 --> 00:14:50.830 that for us, for those who might not know. A 00:14:50.830 --> 00:14:52.870 side effect is when a function changes the state 00:14:52.870 --> 00:14:55.610 of the world outside itself, like modifying a 00:14:55.610 --> 00:14:57.750 file, making a sound, or printing to a screen, 00:14:57.889 --> 00:15:00.470 rather than just returning a value. For purists, 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:03.429 side effects are messy. I see. They are necessary 00:15:03.429 --> 00:15:06.429 eventually, but they are the dirty part of coding. 00:15:06.610 --> 00:15:09.769 So using a side effect as your very first lesson 00:15:09.769 --> 00:15:12.370 is seen as teaching bad habits. So what did they 00:15:12.370 --> 00:15:15.149 do instead of hello world? They usually calculate 00:15:15.149 --> 00:15:19.049 a factorial, like five factorial is 120. It demonstrates 00:15:19.049 --> 00:15:21.870 recursion in math without ever touching the messy 00:15:21.870 --> 00:15:23.950 hardware. It's very academic. We don't want to 00:15:23.950 --> 00:15:25.889 say hello. We just want to do math. That sums 00:15:25.889 --> 00:15:27.730 up the functional community pretty perfectly. 00:15:27.929 --> 00:15:29.730 They want to show you the beauty of the logic. 00:15:30.250 --> 00:15:32.490 not the utility of the screen. So we've gone 00:15:32.490 --> 00:15:35.750 from the B language hack in 1972 through the 00:15:35.750 --> 00:15:38.950 two -year time to Hello World's struggle of Malbolge 00:15:38.950 --> 00:15:42.129 all the way to blinking lights and CNC carving. 00:15:42.950 --> 00:15:45.649 It's amazing how this one ritual has held on 00:15:45.649 --> 00:15:48.250 for so long. It has held on because the fundamental 00:15:48.250 --> 00:15:51.269 problem it solves hasn't changed. We still always 00:15:51.269 --> 00:15:54.289 need to know, is this thing on? It's the bridge 00:15:54.289 --> 00:15:56.429 between the abstraction of our code and the physical 00:15:56.429 --> 00:15:58.899 reality of the machine. But there is a really 00:15:58.899 --> 00:16:01.279 interesting suggestion in the research, specifically 00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:04.519 from Mark Gosdiel and Elliot Soloway, that maybe 00:16:04.519 --> 00:16:08.059 the era of Hello World is finally ending. This 00:16:08.059 --> 00:16:10.860 is a fascinating, forward -looking idea. Their 00:16:10.860 --> 00:16:13.019 argument is that computers themselves are changing. 00:16:13.700 --> 00:16:16.639 For 50 years, the primary way we interacted with 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:19.080 computers was text. We typed, it typed back. 00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:21.860 But look at how kids learn to code right now. 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.340 Like Scratch or Minecraft. Exactly. And Scratch. 00:16:25.820 --> 00:16:27.980 You snap blocks together to make a cartoon cat 00:16:27.980 --> 00:16:30.919 dance. In AI generation, you just ask for an 00:16:30.919 --> 00:16:33.779 image. Text output isn't the primary mode of 00:16:33.779 --> 00:16:36.340 communication anymore. So if I'm programming 00:16:36.340 --> 00:16:38.879 a voice assistant, hello world might just be 00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:41.480 a sound. Or if you're programming a haptic suit 00:16:41.480 --> 00:16:43.539 for VR, it might be a pulse on your wrist, a 00:16:43.539 --> 00:16:46.320 haptic handshake. That's a wild thought. As the 00:16:46.320 --> 00:16:49.120 interface changes, the greeting changes. It forces 00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:51.659 us to ask, what does it actually mean for a computer 00:16:51.659 --> 00:16:54.750 to speak? If the future is brain -computer interfaces, 00:16:55.129 --> 00:16:57.629 maybe Hello World is just a sensation of the 00:16:57.629 --> 00:17:00.330 color blue directly stimulated into your visual 00:17:00.330 --> 00:17:02.529 cortex. The Hello World of the future might just 00:17:02.529 --> 00:17:05.809 be a feeling. It's highly possible. But whatever 00:17:05.809 --> 00:17:08.609 form it takes, we will always need that first 00:17:08.609 --> 00:17:11.769 moment of contact, that first confirmation that 00:17:11.769 --> 00:17:13.930 we have successfully bridged the gap between 00:17:13.930 --> 00:17:17.509 our mind and the machine. That is a great place 00:17:17.509 --> 00:17:19.569 to leave it. Think about that for a while. Whether 00:17:19.569 --> 00:17:22.009 it's a blinking light, a spinning triangle, or 00:17:22.009 --> 00:17:25.390 just those two words on a black screen, the ritual 00:17:25.390 --> 00:17:27.730 continues. It does indeed. If you've never done 00:17:27.730 --> 00:17:30.009 it, maybe go look up a Python tutorial today. 00:17:30.690 --> 00:17:33.529 Type the code. Make the machine say hello. It's 00:17:33.529 --> 00:17:35.609 satisfying in a way that's really hard to describe 00:17:35.609 --> 00:17:37.930 until you actually do it. Everyone should absolutely 00:17:37.930 --> 00:17:39.930 do it at least once. Thanks for listening to 00:17:39.930 --> 00:17:41.589 The Deep Dive. We'll catch you on the next one.