[bryanrasmussen]

but in the same way nobody writes a hello world programming in any language without first reading enough of the language specification to write that hello world program.

on edit: yes, HN cleverboots et al, I should not have written "language specification", you got me! However I challenge anyone of the especially clever people here to go write a hello world in some programming language that you know nothing about, without first looking up how to do it.

That is to say that while hardly anybody "learns the language" to write hello world, they do learn exactly enough of the language to do just that, and continue from there, until they get to some point at which they may feel to get deeper into the language. Thus the parent comment about people not learning the language was not exactly correct either.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I think you would be surprised by how many people write hello world without reading a single character of the language specification! In fact, I would be amazed if it weren't even the majority of new programmers.

[ecb_penguin]

Absolutely no one has read a language specification before writing hello world.

Even as a developer with 30+ years experience, I'll write a dozen simple programs before I ever read a specification...

I'm looking for examples of basic control blocks, not esoteric edge cases for advanced features I don't yet care about.

[satvikpendem]

I think they meant to say docs not language specification, which I agree with.