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Not starting with "Hello World"? Is that even legal?

I have the “Primer of Algol 60 Programming” by Dijkstra. It was created ten years before K&R, so of course it doesn’t start with “Hello World.” But that fact surprised me a little the first time I read it.

I always thought Hello World was the dumbest example. Useful examples are always better.

A minimal viable program that demonstrates basic I/O and allows one to confirm their build tooling works isn't useful?

I try to start with a failing test, because tests not being identified or failures not breaking the build are serious problems.

I used to think foo and bar were really dumb and I thought less of writers who used them for not putting in more effort to provide realistic examples.

That has changed and I'm now grateful to writers who stick with foo and bar, the same way I'm grateful for syntax highlighting. It helps me focus on what is being demonstrated and skip over the stuff that isn't important. Use of foo and bar is good for this, and realistic examples aren't.

There's an argument to be made for hello world that falls along similar lines, probably.

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