[olliesaunders]

Your standard for the importance of things being useful might be slightly out of perspective when you consider the main goal here is to learn: when you first start programming it doesn’t matter what the program does just as long as it did something, you understood it, and you can build on that knowledge to the next thing. That’s why we start with Hello World.

[eitland]

Still I think his point is relevant. For a lot of people the fact that something is useful contributes a whole lot to the motivation for learning it.

[pm90]

He said "...useless programs that amused us" I think that everyone missed the "amused us" part. If your program is useless but still does something that you think is amusing, then that is a great feeling