I speculate

[serenissima]

The archetypal first program to write when learning a new programming language is one that makes the computer display the words "Hello world." Could this message have something to do with our universal desire to communicate and have our existence acknowledged? Or am I reading too much into things?

Also: here's a series of "Hello world" programs arranged according to the supposed job title of the writer. I enjoyed trying to guess which language each one is written in. I think I'll put my guesses in a comment....

Comments

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

High School/Jr. High: BASIC (I remember that!)

First year in college: ??

Senior year in college: Scheme or Lisp

Am having trouble distinguishing among New professional, Seasoned professional, SysAdmin, and Experienced hacker, which ones are using C. I think Seasoned professional is using Java.

Apprentice hacker: Perl, I assume, since it's mentioned.

Seasoned hacker: Shall I call this C, or call it smart use of programs built into Unix/Linux/what have you?

Guru hacker: smart use of shell

New manager: BASIC

Middle manager: polite request

Senior manager: quick request

Chief executive: has forgotten his Unix commands

Research scientist / Older research scientist: I'm assuming these are languages used on big mainframes?

[zeeth_kyrah]

New professional: C
Seasoned professional: C++
SysAdmin: more compact but less efficient C (with a misspelling)

Seasoned hacker: clever use of C compiler to produce Hello World from C program file

Research scientist: see First year in college (probably COBOL)

Older research scientist: FORTRAN

[zeeth_kyrah]

Oh yes, and Experienced hacker: Elegant, efficient C using prebuilt libraries which most likely include necessary error checking (and have probably overloaded the printf statement to provide it).

[403.livejournal.com]

Seasoned professional is using one of the C languages. Java uses "import" not "#include". (Which, after years of not using C/C++, I still find myself having to correct within Java programs.)

Neither of the research scientists are using JCL (Job Control Language; the high-level language that's only used on mainframes). The other option would be COBOL, which is very common in legacy code thanks to IBM's policy of maintaining backwards compatibility at all costs. That looks very much like formalized plaintext, though. The examples read like Fortran to me, which is common on supercomputers.

Edit: Corrected by siege, before I even posted. :)

[amberlorien.livejournal.com]

I think I identified Basic, Visual Basic and SQL and possibly XML. It brings back memories. 99% of them are not good ones. I thought the email requests were maybe something from Word Perfect. I never used it myself but I remember trying to get people to convert to Word and trying to force them with corporal punishment to stop typing codes for formatting and just click the damn toolbar!