The Importance of "Hello World"

I'm sure you're familiar with the hello world program. When you're first learning to write code, or taking your first steps into building embedded systems, the documentation and guides typically instruct you to write simple code to print "hello world." Or in the hardware realm, get an LED to blink.

It's a form of testing that allows you to be confident that everything is working "underneath the hood." If you imagine that the technology you're working on is stacked up upon all of the other technologies that it relies on. For example, the C code that you're writing, relies on the proper operation of the compiler, which relies on the operating system, which relies on the hardware, which relies on power, etc.

When I'm starting a new project from scratch, or testing a new development environment I like to run a quick "hello world" check just to make sure I don't waste valuable time debugging a software error when I really have something else broken in the tool-chain.

I'm begging to put together the modules required for our new telemetry project for the Mobile Communications Center. The Arduino module is newer than the version of the Arduino IDE that I had installed when I built this the last time. So an upgrade was in order, but I couldn't get "hello world" to compile. Once that issue was fixed, I could get it to compile but it wasn't running. There wasn't a blinky light, or message on the serial port. A simple configuration change was needed to recognize the new board.

While "hello world" seems silly and below me, it plays an important time-saving and sanity-checking role.