Normally, there isn’t a computer-related topic covered in a Robonk comic strip. Today, strip #00200 was an exception.
There’s a lot of truth to the saying that “if you have to explain it, it isn’t funny”. Thankfully, some viewers will get the joke, and also, it’s just one strip rather than a series.
Okay, what does it mean?
“Hello, World” is a common starting point for working with a programming language. It was created by Brian Kernighan, who is best known for writing the book The C Programming Language with Dennis Ritchie, creator of the language (and co-creator of UNIX).
Two programming languages, Perl and PHP, are used for the Robonkers system that generates scripts for the comic strips. Below are ways to Hello World in Perl and PHP.
Perl:
print "Hello World\n";
PHP:
<?php print "Hello World\n"; ?>
The escape sequence “\n” in the above examples is for a new line and was popularized by the C programming language.