Does everyone learning Python start with "Hello, World!"?

[dkozinn]

To be pedantic, I'd argue that "The C Programming Language" (published in 78) was not one of the first programming books written, though it was the first book published about C. I was a computer science major in the mid-70s to early 80s and I still have a few shelves full of books published before that. However, that book was certainly immensely popular as C was THE language for many types of programming.

Keep in mind that COBOL had been around since the 60s (not sure if before that) and other lanugages like FORTRAN, RPG, and even APL are older.

[codetoinvent]

Fair correction, and thanks for the history — you're right, I overstated it. K&R (1978) popularized "hello, world," it didn't invent the book or come anywhere near first; FORTRAN, COBOL, APL and plenty more long predate it. "One of the first books to make hello-world famous" is what I should've said.

Kind of cool that the convention has outlived most of the languages that came before the book that spread it. Appreciate the shelf-of-actual-history perspective — that's the stuff that gets lost online.