I begin my blogging with a reflection upon my early career as a programmer. The earliest memory of programming, in fact, was when I discovered that the computer can actually repeat whatever I typed! While the underlying mechanism was merely a DOS batch script and not actually compiled, the metaphysical idea that the computer was able to recognize that I had typed it a message and repeated it to me piqued my curiosity. Programmers often call their first program in a given language “Hello World!” which I suppose reflects a similar appreciation while maintaining its simplicity.
In contrast, consider for a moment the photo I so carefully selected for this post. The colossal complexities involving space travel dwarf the single-line computer programs, which ironically are developed on machines several times more powerful than the Apollo computers sent to the moon. Yet we as humans willingly choose to embark on space exploration and take our failures in stride so that we may one day look upon an alien planet and remark, “Hello World!”