Ever notice how, when you start a new blog, you see a "Hello World!" entry sitting there? Like a loyal dog waiting for you when you get home from work?

Ever wonder why it's "Hello World!", and not "Hi Ma!" or "Look, my very first entry!" or "Achtung, new blog!"?

"Hello World!" is a popular programming phrase. Whenever someone learns a new computer programming language, it is common to write one's first program to simply display the words "Hello World!" on the screen.

As Wikipedia puts it:

A "hello world" program is a software program that prints out "Hello world!" on a display device. It is used in many introductory tutorials for teaching a programming language. Such a program is typically one of the simplest programs possible in a computer language.

So I think it's appropriate, given that this is the introductory post of this new blog, that I start off with a "Hello World!" program of my own, in the very first programming language I ever learned: BASIC!

10 PRINT "Hello World!"
20 PRINT "Welcome to BizThoughts by Mike Lee!"
30 PRINT "----------------------------------------"
40 REM Programming in BASIC is fun!
50 GOTO 40
60 PRINT "I hope you enjoy this new..."
70 PRINT "Hey, wait, how come this text isn't printing?"