Do you have any idea how many times I’ve typed “hello world”? I learned how to program not long after C and Unix were invented and the obligatory code to write out “hello world” to the standard output device was first conceived as an introductory exercise for newbies (we called them “mortals” back then). If I had one kilocore tick for every time I uttered those innocuous words….uh, I guess I’d be a Pentium 4 processor by now.
I’ve grown wiser now, and cynical I might add. I mean, what’s the point. Has the world ever, ever said hello back? How many rookie programmers and code jockeys have put their irons in the fire and burned the midnight oil (a potentially fatal combination) to finally eke out code that puts out (hence the verb output) the correct ASCII sequence “H E L L O W O R L D !” only to suffer the devastating disappointment of realizing that the world isn’t actually listening and is not apt to reply much less scratch out a reply. Not even a minuscule ACK or even an EOT.
It’s no wonder that Microsoft can make trillions of dineros with Visual Studio with its fancy programming interface, drag and drop this into that and hit F5 and presto…stuff happens. Not just compiler stuff, but wondrous stuff…every syntax error is a bundle of information, unlocked with a single series of clicks on the little + sign which, like one of those Russian peasant dolls, reveals yet another bundle of gratifying feedback. Sure…it’s OO gobbledygook that only a billionaire geek’s mother would love, but it’s interactive, it’s rewarding and, if you’re only mildly narcoleptic, it keeps you interested in your job.
I still remember the days when memory was expensive, CPU time was precious and disk space was non existent. Writing code was an art and its actioners were wizards who could squeeze function into form. That was part of the challenge…the machismo of finding a better algorithm than the last guy. COBOL killed that. It forced us to spend time thinking about what we were going to do before we actually got around to thinking about doing it. It virtually took the creativity out of a nascent art.
Programming was saved by open source. It transferred the art of programming back
into the hands of the artists…those people who do it because they love the magic of code, the utterly mystical ability to string together sequences of words and numbers and create interaction….transforming abstract concepts like “how do I make blogging simple” into a finely honed tool like WordPress. Grace Hopper would be proud!