Go's First Commit Easter Egg

When I first started coding in my 8th standard, I was always curious about why the first program we write is a print program with “Hello World” as an output. Still, I never tried to research it until I saw this Reddit post about the first easter egg in the Go programming language when it became open-sourced to the public.

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What was the Easter Egg about?

When Go, A programming language developed by Google, was about to get open-sourced, the first commit to that repository was “Hello World” by Russ Cox, backdated to 1972, as a tribute to Brian Kernighan, a Canadian computer scientist who co-created the book “The C programming language” and is famous for his creation of iconic “Hello World” program. The "hello, world" program is a simple program that, when executed, prints the message "hello, world" to the console. This is a fundamental introduction to a programming language's syntax and basic operations.

By attributing the first Go commit to Brian Kernighan, the developers behind Go acknowledge this legendary figure's influence and the significance of the "Hello, world" program in the history of programming. While the first commit to Go is playful, it carries a deeper message. It states that Brian Kernighan's contributions to the field of computer science are immeasurable, and this Easter egg serves as a tribute to his lasting impact. Below is the screenshot of the commit message.

The first commit in Go’s source code is a small yet meaningful detail that speaks volumes. The creators of Go honoured the roots of programming while setting the stage for their contributions. It’s a reminder that even as technology advances, the history and culture of programming remain vital.

This Easter egg will serve as a delightful reminder of the past but also celebrates the legacy of programming itself -  the beginning of new programming languages.

This blog is written by Akshat Virmani at KushoAI. We're building the fastest way to test your APIs. It's completely free and you can sign up here.