Hello, World

The “Hello, World” program is traditionally the very first program that people write when learning a computer programming language. It is an exceptionally simple program, with no purpose other than to display the phrase Hello, World when executed. It is intended to expose new programmers to the syntax of a language, to the tools required to author and run a program, and to other elements of the software development environment.

Open the assignment

One of the purposes of this assignment is to introduce you to different options for opening and working on assignment repositories. (What's a repository?)

You can choose to open this assignment repository:

• in a GitHub codespace (a container running on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform). This is the best option for most people.
• in a Dev Container (a container running on your personal computer). To do this you will need to install both Visual Studio Code and Docker on your personal computer. This is the best option if your personal computer is relatively new and fast, but your Internet connectivity is slow or intermittent.

If you open the repository in a codespace, you can access the codespace:

• via your Web browser. This is the best option if you want to avoid installing anything on your personal computer.
• via Visual Studio Code installed on your personal computer. This is the best option if you already have Visual Studio Code installed on your personal computer, or you would like to install it.

Open the repository in a GitHub codespace via your browser

This option will create a copy of the repository in a GitHub codespace running in the cloud and accessible via your web browser.

To open this repository in a codespace, click the green <> Code button above. In the panel that opens, go to the Codespaces tab, and click the Create codespace on main button.

Open the repository in a GitHub codespace via Visual Studio Code

This option will create a copy of the repository in a GitHub codespace running in the cloud and accessible via Visual Studio Code running on your personal computer.

First, follow the instructions above for opening the repository in a GitHub codespace via your browser.

Then, click the green <> Code button above. In the panel that opens, go to the Codespaces tab. You should see the codespace you just created. It will have a randomly generated name like solid cod. (If you do not see it, try refreshing the page.)

To open the codespace in Visual Studio code, click the … next to the codespace and select Open in Visual Studio Code, and then follow the prompts.

Open the repository in a Dev Container via Visual Studio Code

This option will create a copy of the repository in a container running on your personal computer, and open it in Visual Studio Code also running on your personal computer.

If you choose this option, first make sure that you have set up Git in VS Code and have signed into VS Code with your GitHub account. Then, follow the instructions to clone a repository locally. (“Clone” means “copy.”)

You should see a repository named <your-github-username>/hello-world in the list of repositories available to clone. (Make sure you do not accidentally clone the programming-for-info-pros/hello-world repository.)

Once you’ve selected the repository to clone, you’ll be prompted to pick a local folder on your computer as the destination of your repository. If (for example) you pick a folder named Code, then cloning the <your-github-username>/hello-world repository will create a folder named hello-world inside the Code folder.

Next you'll be asked if you trust the authors of the code, which you should.

At some point, a notification should pop up in the lower right corner asking if you want to reopen the folder in a container. You should do this.

If you miss the notification, click the bell icon in the lower right corner to show it again.

Requirements

You need to write a program in hello_world.py with a single function named hello_world that prints Hello, World! to the terminal.

Submitting this assignment

You submit this assignment by committing and pushing the changes you make in your codespace back to your assignment repository.

Your repository is set up to automatically run acceptance tests whenever you push changes. However, you first need to grant permission for them to run. Go to your assignment repository on GitHub, click the Actions tab at the top of the page, and then agree to enable workflows.

Now you can try running the tests manually. Select acceptance tests in the sidebar on the left, and then click the Run workflow button on the right (you want the default, from branch main).

The test should fail, since you haven't written any code to make it pass yet!

Once you've done the above, you should be able to see the current status of the tests below. After you've committed and pushed your code, if everything is working, it should turn green.