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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

I totally disagree. I can't stand tutorials or classes that present useless stuff as exercises. It's so much easier to work on something that you can at least imagine would have some value. And it is much, much easier to work on something that you think is either cool or have always wanted to build, etc.

Also, 1/2 a downgrade for the lame, childish example.

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coding lame, childish "examples" are great to get people interested in learning to code.

they provide immediate gratification in terms that non-developers find humorous. which is a great way to spark interest.

Your standard for the importance of things being useful might be slightly out of perspective when you consider the main goal here is to learn: when you first start programming it doesn’t matter what the program does just as long as it did something, you understood it, and you can build on that knowledge to the next thing. That’s why we start with Hello World.

Still I think his point is relevant. For a lot of people the fact that something is useful contributes a whole lot to the motivation for learning it.

He said "...useless programs that amused us" I think that everyone missed the "amused us" part. If your program is useless but still does something that you think is amusing, then that is a great feeling

If I'm learning a new language, the very first thing I want to see is Hello World. It lets me see the basic syntax. Introducing a simple variable and if statement comes next. You pretty much have to start here before you can start creating.

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