Hello World, 1978

The trick to writing braces is this - for a { write a 5 than a 2 below and for a } write a 2 then a 5 below. Practice it a little and you will be writing perfect braces in no time.

Also it is quite amusing how many people love this trick when I tell them after they have spent a decade or more struggling.

Tweet here saying >$7,000: https://twitter.com/zarkadakis/status/582594530135924736

Random reddit comment saying $8,500: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2zluh1/brian_k...

I would love to know who bought it. I just want to know if i can take a screenshot and use it for a class site. I guess I can argue fair use...I love that it's described as an algorithm, because it is...and most non programmers don't realize that because of their complicated preconceptions.

Not that I'm an expert. I learned C but I don't think we used his book. Or if we did, I wish the instructor would have emphasized the opening statement a lot more:

> "The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. The first program to write is the same for all languages:

> Print the words

        hello, world

> This is the basic hurdle; to leap over it you have to be able to create the program text somewhere, compile it successfully, load it, run it, and find out where your output went. With these mechanical details mastered, everything else is comparatively easy."

What a beautiful and complete way to put it. I do hello world out of grudging habit (aka this better f--king work or I'm going to scream)...but I don't think ever appreciated its implications. I imagine it's even harder to do so today as people are more and more removed from basic computing.

I also love his addendum in the wrist statement https://www.artsy.net/article/ruse-laboratories-brian-kernig...

> In hindsight, life is rather more complicated, but this is still a good first step, and "hello world" has taken on a life of its own as the standard first example for programming textboo

Also: "This lot also includes a commemorative 3D-printed Babylonian styled tablet containing the password to a private Github repository where the buyer may access the full source of the Hello World algorithm and an image of the lot."

In 1978 you didn't have to include it; the compiler made assumptions about the function args and return type that held for printf.

C was... different then.

There were no function prototypes in K&R C, these were added in the ANSI C89 standard.

Even now, prototypes are optional in C (as opposed to C++), so this program is still valid, although it's likely to trigger some compiler warnings.

Because for some people it looks better that way. For simple statements, I often find placing braces on their own lines introduces too much of free space. With a few things nested it often looks as if there were more braces than the code itself. And also, I like to group some statements together (by not having free space between them) and suddenly having to separate them by a free-standing brace breaks it. Of course all of this is just a matter of taste.

Perhaps the person who won the auction will make it public? That would be a great contribution to society!!! /s