An explanation of why "Hello, World" is used as the simplest test of a programming environment and its role in verifying the toolchain.
The Narrative
The example appeared in the early 1970s when Brian Kernighan used a simple phrase in the B language in 1972 to demonstrate printing text; it later reappeared in "The C Programming Language" in 1978 and became a standard teaching example.
The simple statement verifies essential elements of the development cycle: writing source code, compiling or interpreting, executing the program, and producing correct output. Its brevity and ease of execution make it a fast check for environment configuration, encodings, and build paths.
Using "Hello, World" as an initial ritual enables quick detection of development-environment issues and serves as a baseline before progressing to more complex examples or integration tests.