Hello, World!: A Brief History of Programming in 90 Languages

Every programming language started with a human moment.

A broken elevator on the 21st floor. A Dutch programmer with nothing to do over Christmas. A ten-day deadline that three billion devices still run today.

In 2006, a programmer climbed twenty-one flights of stairs because his elevator's software had crashed again. By the time he reached his apartment, he had decided to build a language that would make those bugs impossible. The White House later recommended it by name. In 1952, Grace Hopper built the first compiler, and nobody believed her. In 1964, two Dartmouth professors typed RUN at 4 AM and launched the personal computer revolution. In 1995, Brendan Eich built JavaScript in ten days and accidentally created the most widely deployed language on earth.

Hello, World! tells these stories and 85 more. 90 programming languages, 76 years, from Konrad Zuse's Plankalkul in 1948 to Gleam in 2024. Each language gets one page: who made it, why, what the code looks like, and what happened next. 28 spotlight narratives go deeper into the human drama behind the code. Dip in anywhere, or read front to back and watch the history of programming unfold.

Entries verified by the creators of BCPL, SQL, CUDA, Haskell, C++, F#, and Visual Basic.

"A remarkably readable romp through the development of programming languages. Biagio gives us a revealing glimpse into the rooms where it happened. Packed with fascinating vignettes of creators, their motivations, their achievements, and their failures. You will learn more than you expected, and have fun doing it."- Alan Cooper, "The Father of Visual Basic"

"Biagio captures the human stories behind 90 programming languages with genuine care and accuracy."- Don Chamberlin, co-creator of SQL`

"As far as I am concerned it is perfect."- Martin Richards, creator of BCPL

Inside:

• 90 languages across 8 eras, from the Pioneers to the AI Age
• 28 spotlight narratives: the COBOL code that outlived everything, the LOLCODE web server that actually worked, the language built from eight characters
• Verified Hello World code for every language
• The White House memo that named Rust, the compiler nobody believed, the ten-day language that ate the web

No coding experience required. No coding experience hurt, either.