I had a teacher tell me once, back when I was in technical school, that my first program, when learning a new programming language, should always be a “Hello, World!”. She told me that otherwise I would be cursed and would never learn the new language.

I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, but almost 15 years have passed and I continue following her caution — although, as you may have noticed, the exclamation mark is no longer there; I find its enthusiasm a little too much now. But the “Hello World” still remains, even as the first entry in a blog. How else could I start?