Every developer knows those two words: Hello World. Almost every book, tutorial, and class on learning to code starts with your first Hello World program. The main goal of this simple program is to send the message “Hello World” to the screen, whether that’s the standard output in a terminal, a webpage in a browser, or the touch screen of a mobile device. The practice of starting with a “Hello World” program dates back to 1972 when the program first appeared in notes for the BCPL programming language while Bell Labs was developing the C language, and was even used to test the compiler when C++ was developed.

For anyone stepping into programming though, these two words can mean so much more. There is a feeling that comes from seeing the words “Hello World” appear for the first time. Not only has your code come to life, but you have come to life as a programmer. You wrote the code that told a computer what to do. Finally, the reason that the computer displayed a message wasn’t a mystery. You knew exactly why the words “Hello World” appeared.

We chose this as our first post here for two reasons. For one, this is a blog about technology, written by people who are passionate about technology. Many of us on the Campus Tech team can remember that “Hello World” feeling. It seems fitting to bring this blog to life with those same two words.

Finally, the reason that the computer displayed a message wasn’t a mystery. You knew exactly why the words “Hello World” appeared.

The second reason is that we want this blog to give others that feeling of knowing why their computer is doing what it’s doing. We are the Campus Tech team for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, so we spend our days serving the faculty, staff, and students of SBTS. As we help the Southern community, we encounter folks that often feel like they are not in control of their computer. We want this to be a blog that provides knowledge to empower those that feel confused, so that they too can know why their computer does what it does and how to make it do more.

Like much that we do, this will be an experiment in agility, so we hope to constantly evolve and improve the site. We hope that you find this site helpful and informative.