I’ve always found the phrase ‘hello world’ a bit odd. Each time you go about learning a new programming language, you have to get used to its quirks and idiosyncrasies. ‘Hello world’ is usually the first thing you code your computer to say to confirm that the program is working.

I like to imagine that the program itself gains a tiny bit of self-awareness when it responds to you. As it completes its compiling, it’s plopped into the dark world of the terminal and says its first words: ‘Hello world.’

It’s the sort of ‘hello world’ that a robot might say the moment he realized that it was his choice to say something truly original to its newfound world.

As I learned more about programming, I started to express that ‘hello world’ with my own voice. Each time I started to learn a new programming language, I realized that I now could say ‘hello world’ in a new language, that I could communicate with a new type of program.

Today I find myself starting my very own blog as I learn a new kind of language. I’m writing as one part a self-documenting space and one part sharing my findings with the world. And to that I say:

Hello World