From Zero to "Hello, world!"

A "hello world" program is traditional amongst programmers as your first program. This dates back to 1972, in the "Tutorial Introduction to the Language B", a language that proceeded C. A "hello world" program does nothing other than print out the words "hello, world" to the screen. While it's fun to participate in traditions, it also serves a practical purpose: if you can get this simple program working, you know that you've installed everything correctly, you've got your build set up, and that everything is working.

In this chapter, we'll:

• Set up a development environment
• Get everything building
• Boot up our OS and print "Hello world" to the screen

Let's get started!