The Kernighan and Ritchie book opens with the "Hello, World" example. The C++ Programming Language follows an annotated table of contents with "The purpose of a programming language is to help express ideas in code." Cox, on the other hand, opens with the story of Eli Whitney and the industrial revolution.

Somehow we all agree about the importance of history in our society. We teach it to our younger ones, we quote it in our speeches, we talk about it during our dinners. Maybe it is because we had to memorize the names of battles fought ages ago, and we expect to capitalize on that fact so as to appear wise (if not arrogant) to others. We might even agree with history itself, shaking our heads in dismay to some extent, as we see the events unfolding nowadays. A phenomenon which, by all measures, tends to increase with age.

A quote from the cover of Volume One of Professor Donald Knuth's Magnum Opus, "The Art of Computer Programming (3rd edition)": "If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing." "Me" here refers to the author of the quote, Bill Gates.