The Hello World Collection

A collection of Hello World code snippets in all major programming languages.

Available as NFTs on Ethereum.

Motivation

“Hello, World!” is probably the most iconic general piece of code in the history of programming. It is the typical starting point in learning a language and gives a glimpse into its very basic syntax.

With the hype of NFTs, I thought about what digital item I would have fun with owning and my first idea was Hello, World! in my favorite programming languages. So I created and minted them on OpenSea, the biggest NFT market place.

Development

One problem was, that OpenSea only allows images. However, I did not just want to make an image of the code, as it does not feel like “owning” the actual code. My solution to this was the svg format, which is basically text, that is only rendered to an image. So technically, you get the code itself. At least more than with an image. Nevertheless, I could not resist to add some code coloring for beauty at the cost of purity.

It also was fun to learn more about what svgs actually are and that you basically only need a text editor and no complex vector image software like InkScape to create them.

Here is an example of a very basic one (pun intended). Its just some general image definition like font and sizing, then making a white background rect and adding the text

<svg version="1.1"
    font-family="Courier New"
    font-size="16"
    width="251"
    height="40"
    viewBox="0 0 251 40"
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <rect width="100%" height="100%" fill="white"/>
  <text>
    <tspan x="10" y="1.5em" fill="gray">10</tspan>
    <tspan>PRINT</tspan>
    <tspan fill="#4070a1">"Hello, World!"</tspan>
  </text>
</svg>

While this looks not so puristic, it still has the property that if you right-click and the resulting image and open it in a new tab, you can for example actually copy the code.