Hello World of Web Pages
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Have you ever heard of the phrase “Hello World”? Back in the 70s and 80s, it was the first program that children wrote on the Commodore 64, and still exists as one of the first things you do when learning a new programming language today. When computers were very new and programs arrived on cassettes, many of us learned to write the program “Hello World”, and it looked a little like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su4PG1j469M
The two lines told the computer what to do, and then the third line RUN was the command to execute the program. Even though this was the very basics of writing a programming, it was a lot of fun as you’re able to tell the computer to do something, as well as when to do the thing.
HTML is a programming language. It tells computers what to do, and at it’s very essence, it is as simple as this ‘Hello world’ program from the 70s and 80s.
If you have a browser on your computer, such as Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari, and a text editor, you can write a webpage.
- Open your text editor, and type “hello world”.
- Save the file as “index.htm” or “index.html”
- Locate your file and double click!
You have just programmed something in HTML!
There is a lot more to making a webpage with a purpose but essentially at it’s core, a website is a series of commands for a computer to do something somewhere. Over the last thirty plus years of the internet, programmers have developed some amazing programming, and with increases in the power of our technology and the accessibility of knowledge, skills and sandboxes, it is truly amazing to consider how far we have come.
If you’d like to play some more, check out some free tutorials online, and see how much fun it can be to add images, italics, fonts and font sizes, and blinking text. Have fun!
For some fun, find out how many days old the internet was when you were born!
HTML is super flexible, and it’s really easy to learn. It can be quite a hobby though, as writing code and seeing the results is addictive! It’s highly versatile and still has a place in the modern internet. However, there’s quite a leap between ‘Hello World’ and a full fledged professionally delivered website. If you’d like to chat with someone about getting your sites sorted, let us know!