Advent of Computing - Dale Biagio - Hello, World!

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

Dale Biagio(author of Hello, World!) got in touch with me recently. He said he had a book full of short histories of programming languages. Better still, it has sources! How could I resist! In this episode I sit down with Dale to talk about the intersection of technical and human histories. You can find more about Hello, World! at Dale's website: https://helloworldthebook.com/

Welcome back to advent of computing and an interruption of our usual schedule. I'm doing this for a purely ulterior motive. You'll learn about that next week when I drop the next full-length episode. But between then and now, I have something special to share. We're doing another book interview. I was contacted recently by Dale Biagio, author of Hello World, The Human Stories Behind the Code that Built Our World. I've been really enjoying the book,

and I had the chance to interview Dale for the podcast, so I thought, you know, it would be nice to share that with my listeners. Anyway, here's my interview with Dale, and I'll be back in a week with my ulterior motive. Enjoy the show and have a great rest of your day. Hey, Dale, welcome to the show. How's it going? Yeah, thank you very much, Sean. One on you. It's great to be on the show. Long-time listener, first-time caller, yeah. I mean, the internet is pretty close to calling at this point, right? So Dale, you're here because you decided to send me a book you wrote called Hello World.

Could you give a little introduction about yourself and the book for the listeners out there? Yeah, sure. So I've been building software for 25 years, you know, moving through different roles, developer, developer and manager, needing a global team of developers and testers. And then into the software architecture, more software architecture roles. for like 11 years. But my love of coding has remained throughout this process. Well, it would be hard to keep a professional life going that long

if you didn't actually like programming, right? Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, when you're taking an overly complex few lines of code and you distill it down, something simple as inefficient, so there's a bit of a beauty to it. And in each language, you know, you work with, has their own use cases and nuances and structure. It got me thinking about the origin of these languages.

You know, someone had a problem that couldn't solve or a use case they couldn't solve with the languages that were available. So they invented a new one, you know. I thought, what did that process look like? Who were these geniuses that came up with these languages, you know, is versatile as Python, is the control of sense. plus plus, elegance of Haskell,

eventiveness of rust. And then at some point in the process of creating these languages, the majority then tested the output of this with the hello world. Well, it is the classic, right? It has been the classic for a very long amount of time.

Yeah, it's awesome. And then I thought, where did those two words come from? So the book started out with that research in mind. You know, where did those two words come from? And I wanted to, the book started as a reference of how does her world look in each of these languages. Okay. But in exploring the histories of these languages is always the case with history.

You know, you more you zoom in past the dates and events. and, you know, the lines, you find these incredible stories of normal people, you know, going through struggles, personal tragedies and triumphs. And it's felt quite fascinating. So it's like, if I was ignorant of all of these stories, there must be many tech enthusiasts like myself, want to wear them either. You know, I'd love to try and share those stories. And that's how that's how that book really changed from being, you know, just sort of a reference book into more a story about the people, which is, I think, yeah, which was great to me.

I loved it. I really like that too. So full disclosure, I've read probably about half the book since you've sent it to me. Very great. well i i really really like your writing style is super accessible which i feel like a lot of people that write tech history myself included i'm guilty of this on occasion um can get really really detail oriented in a way that's not um enjoyable to read it could be very factual to read um but you you do both in the book which i really enjoy and the so how you've structured where you have

actual like chronology of each language and just the little hello world where applicable and a short snippet of information about each language but then mix in with the essays that you do about the people behind the languages. I think that's a really good choice. That's the best of both you should. Right. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. I was like because you know, I wanted to make those factual reference part of the book as well. That's interesting. So what was, one is interesting about this language, you know, because all of them are, all of them have. And, you know, I wish I could have had, and, you know, this book took me years to write, but if I'd had more time, you know, you have to get a version out of there,

out there. It would be much longer with, you know, with all, a lot more essays. And if I can say that, there will definitely be a second edition if I'll go good time. Good, I look forward to it. And like you were saying about the people behind the stories or the people behind the languages, creating a programming language is a huge challenge, it's a huge undertaking. So when someone does a project like that, they put a lot of themselves into it. So that's, I completely agree with you that the stories behind the people that do this kind of work, that's really what's fascinating.

Yeah. So if you think about, you know, it's about the process of, writing the book. Instead, it started a few years ago. They used the history resources out there, like the papers from Hopple. You mentioned that you have it behind you there, which is great. Right up there. Is there a physical copy of the proceedings of Hopple 3, or is it all online once I switched

today? Yeah, not yet. Okay. No physical one yet, but yeah, you've got to. I've been loading out. I've been wanting to complete the series a little bit more. Yeah. It's a fantastic set of resources, and it really goes in depth, as you know, I'm sure, of the building of these languages and the people involved.

And I really just researched every little piece of history, like rabbit hole having done. And so really my favorite stories were the ones that I wrote the bigger essays on. Yeah. So, Halp is also just a fascinating, well, I have some hot takes on Hopple, history of programming languages by ACM,

if you're not familiar for the listeners. Go ahead. What's interesting, I think, is because each of the proceedings or each of the articles in Hopple is written usually by someone that worked on the language,

who worked on the language's development. You can kind of pick up their quirks from it, I think. Like if I've been learning APL for a project on the show. Awesome. Oh, I don't know if I'd say awesome. Fascinating. Fascinating is great.

The APL session in Hopple is like so idiosyncratic. Like it's so the writing style is so specific to other papers that the APL developers wrote. So like that as an introduction is like, oh, I've. learned something about you. I don't know if you intended me to learn that. But you don't get that without primary sourcing like Hopple is what I'm getting. For sure. For sure. You know, and that's kind of leads me to my next point is so I, you know, I was, I didn't have a lot of confidence while I was writing this thing. You know, it's my first book I've written. I've always liked creative writing as well as, and that's, I suppose, that's where you're finding that the stories

but in my job I'm required to be very technical so it's like that's where that mix comes from but so I reached out you know to the creators you know and I took a chance and I just searched for contact details of them I don't know these people at all I really just took a chance

and some of them I just guessed their email to be honest and I'll tell you nothing. And, you know, it is amazing. And I got replies from them. And I know, you know, it's so Brian Kernigan, the creator of Hello World is, you know, it's funny enough, the first to reply. And, you know, he confirmed my story.

He was accurate. Oh, that's. Which is so cool. That seems very auspicious if you're starting at the start and you're like guy immediately. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you confirmed my story was accurate, which is so red. I'm like, wow. It was very brief, but that was it. And I was like, wow, that was so amazing. I got a reply. You know? That's great. Yeah. Then, you know, beyond Strauss up the grade of C++, same reply. He actually spent time correcting my code. He, which I say is my favorite pool request I've ever done. programming, Jack.

And he also explained the name C++ came from, from his colleague, Rick Massiti, who suggested it as a joke because it's an incrementing the version of C. And so he said, Bianz says he liked the joke, so he kept the name. So cool. And then Ian Buck of Nvidia and Kudor, his was the email I just guessed.

And he took the code, he compiled it, add an optimization to it. He says, and it gave me a compliment on the story. He says, it's such as someone who runs the software foundation of a multi-chillion dollar industry. And he took the most time out of his day to do the most basic and humble work. For someone he's never met. I think that that speaks to if you can get someone to talk about their work, you can usually get him to talk, right? It's just making that connection, which you did.

And kudos. That's the kind of legwork that's really important to do. That was amazing. Yeah. Martin Richards of BCPL, he wrote me three massive large emails of context, giving me the minute details of the language. you know, in detail you'd love you. Sean is in 1967.

The IBM 7-09-4 character set didn't have any curly brackets, curly braces. So he used dollar bracket for his function. Yeah, that's close enough, right? That's like a curly brace. Yeah. And then when the IBM evolved into the golf ball typewriter, the bigger character set, then he brought in the brackets. And that's really cool.

I was actually reading that essay while I was eating dinner right before it was called. I'm curious why he chose curly braces. Like if he had known about them earlier and was like, ooh, well, I can actually use them in Typeface now. Do you know the answer to that? No, you say he just wanted to be able to encompass his code blocks in something that was distinctive. That you wouldn't use. Gotcha. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's why you started off with that dollar bracket. Yeah, because who would use that? That's not good syntax. And then simplified with the Calibrate. That's really fun. So I got a question for you, Dale. Yeah.

What was your favorite language in the book? Do you pick favorites? Are you that kind of guy? So, look, as I have always loved, You know, JavaScript was my first love. You know, starting out with it, and how interactive it was in terms of it. I could make changes without, you know, compiling and stuff,

which was really cool. But, I mean, all these languages that I explored here in the book, I mean, Hescal has like an elegance to it. I think they all bring something that's just great. I've got to think of how these people thought of it like on SQL he was trying to make it simple for humans to be able to read the code

and know what it's doing yeah you know and which which is so great that you know it makes sense why it looks like it does and all of them have this like nuance and instructed to again to solve a problem like like

Kuda as well they brought in I can't even remember what you can't even what you can't even what you can't call it but to really focus to get the execution

on the GPUs yeah so everything all of the languages bring something that yeah that's also

and then obviously I have those really weird esoteric languages in there as well like the Shakespeare one. I don't know if you've got that far, but I feel that was so fun. I haven't made it that far yet. I'm one of the friends of the show. Dan Timpkin is a big

S. O. Lane guy. And he's a fan of Shakespeare and the idea of like, oh, how does he put it? He explains esoteric languages as like a radical reaction kind of thing, right, as like a deconstruction of programming, which they are that. They're also very funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So great. I just loved reading how they used the Shakespearean prose to make guide. It's like so interesting. You know, it's a lot of time spent sort of maybe rebelling against the structure or the or critiquing, right? Yeah. Really nice way to put it, yeah. For sure. So I have another question. Yeah. You have a good deal about basic in here, but you don't have anything about dope. And I saw you did, you do cite a book where you could have learned about dope.

Were you able to actually track down a copy of Back to Basics? So I did have a read in that. So I try to remember what my exact reasoning was. Yeah, again, as I said, I chose, it's not a complete history for sure. Yeah, well, it'll be impossible to do a complete history of programming languages. So it was the 90 language that really more appealed it to me. So basic, I can tell you, um,

we're super interesting to me on the, on the, on the Ellen Cooper, um, side of things. Um, okay. So because,

you know, he, and I, I can touch on that where, um, you know, he, he,

he was explained to me that he wrote, uh, it was originally called Ruby. Mm-hmm. And you have the name, which is what did the name he was going to name his daughter if they had had one. And, um,

So he wanted to make a programming limit for normal people, not just for programmers. So he built this visual tooling that is associated with Visual Basic for Ruby. And, you know, he showed it to Microsoft, showed it to Bill Gates. And then sort of without his knowledge, it was launched to the world. as visual basic. And they extracted the visual building of Ruby and put it into on top of basic and called it visual basic.

That seems like that would be almost a heartbreaking thing to have happened to your code, right? Yeah, he wasn't happy about it. Let me tell you. He doesn't have nice things to say. I can guess some of the words he might say. Yeah, it didn't have nice things to say about Microsoft from back then. But it was a super interesting story.

Again, this is why a lot of the languages were chosen was really, well, that's a cool story. Yeah, you're sitting next to Bill Gates taking him through Ruby. That's really cool. That is really funny. I've just been really enjoying the book. I haven't gotten up. I see there is intercal in it. haven't gotten to that section yet. I need to get to that section. What's your opinion of

InterCal, since I have you, I have your undivided attention? Yeah, I'm trying to remember. Yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been a while on InterCal itself. I'll have to remind myself. it's the one it's the first esoteric language it's the one that has like embrace and squiggle and splot and splat yes yeah that's just people trying to

you know trying to make a program language it can't be they can't be used really so if you remember what it stands for it's the compiler language with no pronounceable acronym.

Yeah. Hence why it's called entry cow. Obviously. So great. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a fun, fun story on these people that really just wanted to, I don't know, poke the Mickey at the structure of, you know. And I remember now that the reference compiler, its name is Ick.

Yeah, I-C-K. Oh, man, these guys. That is what I like about how you approach this book, is that as we keep going back to, the technical part's interesting. Like, cool, that's nerd stuff. We can appreciate nerd stuff. But the human stories, like the human aspect is a lot more universal than, like, oh, how definitions of scope change between the 60s and 70s could fill tomes with that.

Very fascinating. But things like the essay on logo, I read that a few days ago. And that was fascinating. I had no idea that the creator of logo was from apartheid, South Africa, or had any activist background and how connected that was to his conception of what a programming language should be. Yeah, trying to make it accessible to, to be accessible and to, you know, to everyone. Make it something that children can learn a lot easier

than, you know, C plus, blah. Wish that always takes of some doing. It really made it interesting because I also, when I was in school, we actually did logo as well and also remember it being taught about, it's this like, they used it like a little triangle, but they teach you that they call it the turtle and you basically tell the turtle which direction to move in

and so it's really like the first way to expose kids to make it programming fun and tell the turtle to go forward and yeah it's really it's really cool that he comes from that background of everything you know apart say Africa being restricted and apart and he wanted to try and spread this to to people to make it easy for people to get educated and empower people, I think that's the right word.

Yeah. Yeah, and if you just look at the technical details, you miss that. There's just no way to glean that without knowing the story. But if you know the story, you can see the little touches around the edge that made things unique. Yeah, and, you know, that's, you know, what I said in the beginning is, you know, even now, neither someone has been working with these things my whole life, or my whole adult life, and you know, you don't know these things unless you really dig and then look for them. And then once you know the background about a language, and you're like, oh, you know,

not makes sense, as you say. Yeah, I'm definitely a big believer in that when I try to teach about anything, I always go from the historical perspective. I mean, that might go without saying with the podcast, but like it worked when I'm mentoring younger programmers when they ask me like, oh, well, why do we use XML like this? I'll like explain the history of it. And then I, at least I think that gives people a more grounded understanding.

Yeah, well, it's a much better answer than because. Yeah, because we have to. Yeah. Look, it's a well-established standard. You have to stick to standards. That's not a good reason, but yeah, if it educates someone in the background, then empowering them. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's a more powerful tool than a fact. Yeah, for sure. So was there anything that really surprised you while you were researching this book? I know you've been coming back to the theme of there's a lot you didn't know. And there's a lot. I don't know one here. I like this. Yeah.

Good book. but what surprised you the most? I think also some of the ones that, you know, going back to the which of the languages that got away, which are the ones I haven't added it to an addition yet. Addition to coming soon. You know, Ellen Cooper spoke, said he wanted to make sure, I suppose there's quite a few things that surprise me,

One of them was, you know, Alan Cooper said he wanted to make sure that the name Gary Kittle is not forgotten. And, you know, Kittle wrote CPM. Yeah. It's like the first practical operating system for these early microprocessors, you know, which literally became the blueprint for MS DOS. Well, MS DOS was stolen from CPM. Like by a circuitous route, but, yeah, blueprint's a more conciliatory way to put it. Yeah, yeah. And I said, Ellen Cupid didn't have a lot of nice things to say.

He was very blunt, you know, literally quoting him, basically Bill Gates, God, Rich, stealing Gary's work. But that's a whole different book. Yeah. As I said, it's so amazing that these people, well, no, they owe me nothing. so gracious and humble, you know, spent the time of a cold email that I sent them.

And maybe that's also at what point that they're surprising the most that these people that are, you know, take the time out of their day, take the time out of their weeks to have a conversation with me, explain and correct my stories, and really give me the history

from the people that were there. And, you know, that is, definitely something that, you know, you can't buy. You can't buy that, um, getting that firsthand experience or firsthand history from the people that are there. And it's, that's really so powerful. Yeah. That's fantastic. So you mentioned Grace Hopper and were you baiting me, you know, you know how I feel about Admiral Grace Hopper. Yeah. Yeah. So, so tell me. What was the story you wanted to share? Sure. So, you know, Don Chamberlain was equal. So it's early 1970s. IBM is a research lab in San Jose. So there's two men on the team, Don Chamberlain and Raymond Boyce. So these guys weren't just colleagues. They were, you know, best friends. They'd traveled, they moved across the country together to work on this language that they were trying to build. So I want to make.

programming more readable and accessible to humans. We've going the other direction now in 2026. Yeah, but we can still recollect on the good old days. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the problem was this man Edith Cobb had written this paper saying you could organize a database, as pure as mathematics. It was a beautiful idea. but nobody knew if it could actually run.

So they set out to build this language that, you know, as I said, you and I could understand, to ask a database of question, you know, very applicable now. In something they chose, you know, as close as you code to plain English. So they called SQL, M-S-E-Q-U-E-L. And then, so in May, 1974, they traveled to Ann Harbor, Michigan, and they presents it together. And the paper's titled Sequel A structured English query language.

And then 30 days after that, his best friend passes away. At work, they drove to work together that day. He had a brain, Raymond Boyce, he had a brain aneurysm, no warning. I'm 27 years old. That's horrifying. Yeah.

He had to drive home. alone that day, you know, go and break the news to his wife. Terrible. And then that language they presented became, you know, sequel. So the most widely used career language and everyone knows it. Everyone's heard of it, I'm sure, well, everyone in the industry at least. Every bank, hospital, airline, we've gone to use this. I was using it about an hour ago.

Yeah. I don't know this. Yeah. And, you know, and no one really knows his friend's name, and remembers Don Chamberlain of people that obviously were aware of the creator. So I found this story and, you know, I sent it to Don Chamberlain and he's like, wow, this is a really moving story, very well written. Mostly right.

You know, and so he spent, he spent. he spent about a week going back and forth with me making sure this story was absolutely 100% factual every single fact but it's just such an amazing story that you know yes two best friends they work in this language that's you know impacted the whole world we can definitely say that because everyone has used a product that has that used a sequel and And his best friend, one of the creators, didn't get to see it become what it did. So it's really touching story, I think. It's really, yeah.

Well, and taking the time to get it right is that's so important. Yeah, wow. Damn. Yeah. It's really cool. Well, really touching. And then really cool interaction with Bonjay. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Well, thanks so much for tone on the show and talking, Dale. Where can people get your book? Where can people follow you online? What's the plug? Yeah, so the book is on Amazon, Hello World The Book, and it is also Helloworldthebook.com, as the most easiest place to find more information about it. and there are some there's a chapter in there as well and so you can see my writing style and at the bottom of the page you can see what these languages look like

and play with them as well in an little interactive thing so yeah otherwise I'm on LinkedIn and that's probably we are most active yeah Del Beodjo LinkedIn

fantastic I'll have a link to your website in the show notes. Thanks again, Dale. And I do recommend the book. This is one that's definitely got a place on my shelf. Yeah, thank you, Sean. I really appreciate the chat today. I really enjoy your show, and I thought it was some overlap here between. Oh, yes, definitely. Part two interests.