The Evolution Of Language Through The Use of Hello World

This is meant to be used in conjunction with Chapter 6 of "The History of Computing" to highlight one of the ways programming languages have evolved over the past 60+ years. Sure, it's probably more useful to instantiate and manipulate variables, highlight different techniques for recursion, different data structures, typing, etc. But the number of characters required to print "Hello Cruel World!" to a screen is perhaps a good litmus for the productivity level of developers. Here we have two characters in the exclamation point (!) and the space that usually need to be escaped or casue the whole string to be treated as a literal. Some of these are compiled languages and others are interpretated (some can be both), which is covered in more depth in the book.

To see these on a timeline, see: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOcM3Y-M=/?invite_link_id=982806079617.

Also, contributions are welcome!

Binary

1001000 1100101 1101100 1101100 1101111 100000 1000011 1110010 1110101 1100101 1101100 100000 1010111 1101111 1110010 1101100 1100100 100001

Hex

48656c6c6f20437275656c20576f726c6421

Assembly

This can vary wildly based on the version of Assembly (e.g. the 6502 vs a modern ARM or Intel variant). The more common is probably x86, so...

    org  0x100       
    mov  dx, msg     
    mov  ah, 9       
    int  0x21        
    mov  ah, 0x4c    
    int  0x21        
    msg  db 'Hello Cruel World!', 0x0d, 0x0a, '$'

To see a number of different basics, check out http://helloworldcollection.de.

COBOL

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    DISPLAY 'Hello Cruel World!'.
    STOP RUN.

FORTRAN

FORTRAN was initially used with punch cards and so for some of the earlier versions it was necessary to punch certain characters into a given like (like if commenting out code). So while it hasn't necessary gotten easier once punched, it's easier to not have to maybe...

FORTRAN 66

WRITE (6,7,8)
FORMAT(13H Hello Cruel World)
STOP
END

FORTRAN 77

PROGRAM HELLOWORLD
     PRINT '(A)', 'Hello Cruel World!'
     STOP
END

Fortran 90

program hellocruelworld
  print *, 'Hello Cruel World!'
end program hellocruelworld

ALGOL

BEGIN DISPLAY("Hello Cruel World!") 
END.

Or for more modern incantations

printf(($gl$, "Hello Cruel World!"))

Lisp

Common Lisp

puts "Hello Cruel World!"

Most Modern Lisps

(format t "Hello Cruel World!")

BASIC

10 print "Hello Cruel World!"

APL

'Hello Cruel World!'

C

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello Cruel World!");
return 0;
}

Bash

echo "Hello Cruel World!"

AWK

awk 'BEGIN { print "Hello Cruel world!" }'

TCL

puts "Hello Cruel World!"

Smalltalk

'Hello Cruel World!' printNl !

PASCAL

program HelloCruelWorld;
begin
  writeln ('Hello Cruel World!');
end.

C++

#include <iostream>

int main() {
	std::cout << "Hello Cruel World!";
	return 0;
}

C#

namespace HelloCruelWorld
{
    class Helloworld {        
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            System.Console.WriteLine("Hello Cruel World!");
        }
    }
}

F#

printfn "Hello Cruel World!"

Hypercard

Java

class HelloCruelWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello Cruel World!"); 
    }
}

JavaScript

console.log("Hello Cruel World!");

Typescript

Scala

object Hello extends App {
	printIn("Hello Cruel World!")
}

Turbo Pascal

program Hello;
begin
  writeln ('Hello Cruel World!');
end.

Delphi

WriteLn('Hello Cruel World!');
    ReadLn;

HTML and .Net

Fine, this is more of a layout than a language, language, but bear with me...

<html>
   <body>

      <h1>Hello Cruel World!</h1>

   </body>
</html>

Visual Basic

Module HelloCruelWorld
     Sub Main( )
        System.Console.WriteLine("Hello Cruel World!")
     End Sub
  End Module

Perl

perl -e "print qq{Hello Cruel World\n}"

or for more modern versions:

print "Hello Cruel World!";

Raku

say 'Hello Cruel World!';

print("Hello Cruel World!\n");

PHP

CLI

echo "Hello Cruel World!";

Or to print to a page:

<?php
  echo "Hello Cruel World!";
?>

Python

print('Hello Cruel World!')

Ruby

puts "Hello Cruel World!"

Go

printfn "Hello Cruel World!"

Or in a function:

import "fmt"
func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello Cruel World!")
}

MATLAB

disp('Hello Cruel World!');

Swift

print("Hello Cruel World!")

Kotlin

fun main(args: Array<String>){
	println("Hello Cruel World!")
}

R

cat('Hello Cruel World!')

Dart

void main() {
  print("Hello Cruel World!");
}

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