It's pretty much a tradition that the first step of learning a new programing language involves writing code that simply displays, "Hello, World!". I don't recall ever hearing of anyone questioning this practice, but it occurred to me to do so last week at ApacheCon. I don't know why, but I started pondering it, and I think I may have come up with the answer.
I suspect it's because having your first program display, "Goodbye, World!" would be less than reassuring.