Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Programmers have traditionally created as their first application in any language or environment the “Hello World” application. This is an application, small as possible, that outputs the words, “Hello World”. Wikipedia has a nice entry on Hello World, including the first known instance of using this now ubiquitous right of passage for programming.
The thing with “Hello World” is that it’s a small sentence, and thus isn’t the best of tests when trying out a content system, such as text editor, weblogging tool, and so on. Enter the Lorem Ipsum generator, the Hello World of writing. Wikipedia also has a nice entry on this.