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So... uh... this is a bit embarrassing. But we don't have a plain "Hello, World!" challenge yet (despite having 35 variants tagged with , and counting). While this is not the most interesting code golf in the common languages, finding the shortest solution in certain esolangs can be a serious challenge. For instance, to my knowledge it is not known whether the shortest possible Brainfuck solution has been found yet.

Furthermore, while all of Wikipedia (the Wikipedia entry has been deleted but there is a copy at archive.org ), esolangs and Rosetta Code have lists of "Hello, World!" programs, none of these are interested in having the shortest for each language (there is also this GitHub repository). If we want to be a significant site in the code golf community, I think we should try and create the ultimate catalogue of shortest "Hello, World!" programs (similar to how our basic quine challenge contains some of the shortest known quines in various languages). So let's do this!

The Rules

  • Each submission must be a full program.

  • The program must take no input, and print Hello, World! to STDOUT (this exact byte stream, including capitalization and punctuation) plus an optional trailing newline, and nothing else.

  • The program must not write anything to STDERR.

  • If anyone wants to abuse this by creating a language where the empty program prints Hello, World!, then congrats, they just paved the way for a very boring answer.

    Note that there must be an interpreter so the submission can be tested. It is allowed (and even encouraged) to write this interpreter yourself for a previously unimplemented language.

  • Submissions are scored in bytes, in an appropriate (pre-existing) encoding, usually (but not necessarily) UTF-8. Some languages, like Folders, are a bit tricky to score - if in doubt, please ask on Meta.

  • This is not about finding the language with the shortest "Hello, World!" program. This is about finding the shortest "Hello, World!" program in every language. Therefore, I will not mark any answer as "accepted".

  • If your language of choice is a trivial variant of another (potentially more popular) language which already has an answer (think BASIC or SQL dialects, Unix shells or trivial Brainfuck-derivatives like Alphuck), consider adding a note to the existing answer that the same or a very similar solution is also the shortest in the other language.

As a side note, please don't downvote boring (but valid) answers in languages where there is not much to golf - these are still useful to this question as it tries to compile a catalogue as complete as possible. However, do primarily upvote answers in languages where the authors actually had to put effort into golfing the code.

For inspiration, check the Hello World Collection.

The Catalogue

The Stack Snippet at the bottom of this post generates the catalogue from the answers a) as a list of shortest solution per language and b) as an overall leaderboard.

To make sure that your answer shows up, please start your answer with a headline, using the following Markdown template:

## Language Name, N bytes 

where N is the size of your submission. If you improve your score, you can keep old scores in the headline, by striking them through. For instance:

## Ruby, <s>104</s> <s>101</s> 96 bytes 

If there you want to include multiple numbers in your header (e.g. because your score is the sum of two files or you want to list interpreter flag penalties separately), make sure that the actual score is the last number in the header:

## Perl, 43 + 2 (-p flag) = 45 bytes 

You can also make the language name a link which will then show up in the snippet:

## [><>](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Fish), 121 bytes 

/* Configuration */ var QUESTION_ID = 55422; // Obtain this from the url // It will be like https://XYZ.stackexchange.com/questions/QUESTION_ID/... on any question page var ANSWER_FILTER = "!t)IWYnsLAZle2tQ3KqrVveCRJfxcRLe"; var COMMENT_FILTER = "!)Q2B_A2kjfAiU78X(md6BoYk"; var OVERRIDE_USER = 8478; // This should be the user ID of the challenge author. /* App */ var answers = [], answers_hash, answer_ids, answer_page = 1, more_answers = true, comment_page; function answersUrl(index) { return "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/" + QUESTION_ID + "/answers?page=" + index + "&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter=" + ANSWER_FILTER; } function commentUrl(index, answers) { return "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/answers/" + answers.join(';') + "/comments?page=" + index + "&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter=" + COMMENT_FILTER; } function getAnswers() { jQuery.ajax({ url: answersUrl(answer_page++), method: "get", dataType: "jsonp", crossDomain: true, success: function (data) { answers.push.apply(answers, data.items); answers_hash = []; answer_ids = []; data.items.forEach(function(a) { a.comments = []; var id = +a.share_link.match(/\d+/); answer_ids.push(id); answers_hash[id] = a; }); if (!data.has_more) more_answers = false; comment_page = 1; getComments(); } }); } function getComments() { jQuery.ajax({ url: commentUrl(comment_page++, answer_ids), method: "get", dataType: "jsonp", crossDomain: true, success: function (data) { data.items.forEach(function(c) { if (c.owner.user_id === OVERRIDE_USER) answers_hash[c.post_id].comments.push(c); }); if (data.has_more) getComments(); else if (more_answers) getAnswers(); else process(); } }); } getAnswers(); var SCORE_REG = (function(){ var headerTag = String.raw `h\d` var score = String.raw `\-?\d+\.?\d*` // with negative/floating-point support var normalText = String.raw `[^\n<>]*` // no HTML tag, no newline var strikethrough = String.raw `<s>${normalText}</s>|<strike>${normalText}</strike>|<del>${normalText}</del>` var noDigitText = String.raw `[^\n\d<>]*` var htmlTag = String.raw `<[^\n<>]+>` return new RegExp( String.raw `<${headerTag}>`+ String.raw `\s*([^\n,]*[^\s,]),.*?`+ String.raw `(${score})`+ String.raw `(?=`+ String.raw `${noDigitText}`+ String.raw `(?:(?:${strikethrough}|${htmlTag})${noDigitText})*`+ String.raw `</${headerTag}>`+ String.raw `)` ); })(); var OVERRIDE_REG = /^Override\s*header:\s*/i; function getAuthorName(a) { return a.owner.display_name; } function process() { var valid = []; answers.forEach(function(a) { var body = a.body; a.comments.forEach(function(c) { if(OVERRIDE_REG.test(c.body)) body = '<h1>' + c.body.replace(OVERRIDE_REG, '') + '</h1>'; }); var match = body.match(SCORE_REG); if (match) valid.push({ user: getAuthorName(a), size: +match[2], language: match[1], link: a.share_link, }); }); valid.sort(function (a, b) { var aB = a.size, bB = b.size; return aB - bB }); var languages = {}; var place = 1; var lastSize = null; var lastPlace = 1; valid.forEach(function (a) { if (a.size != lastSize) lastPlace = place; lastSize = a.size; ++place; var answer = jQuery("#answer-template").html(); answer = answer.replace("{{PLACE}}", lastPlace + ".") .replace("{{NAME}}", a.user) .replace("{{LANGUAGE}}", a.language) .replace("{{SIZE}}", a.size) .replace("{{LINK}}", a.link); answer = jQuery(answer); jQuery("#answers").append(answer); var lang = a.language; lang = jQuery('<i>' + a.language + '</i>').text().toLowerCase(); languages[lang] = languages[lang] || {lang: a.language, user: a.user, size: a.size, link: a.link, uniq: lang}; }); var langs = []; for (var lang in languages) if (languages.hasOwnProperty(lang)) langs.push(languages[lang]); langs.sort(function (a, b) { if (a.uniq > b.uniq) return 1; if (a.uniq < b.uniq) return -1; return 0; }); for (var i = 0; i < langs.length; ++i) { var language = jQuery("#language-template").html(); var lang = langs[i]; language = language.replace("{{LANGUAGE}}", lang.lang) .replace("{{NAME}}", lang.user) .replace("{{SIZE}}", lang.size) .replace("{{LINK}}", lang.link); language = jQuery(language); jQuery("#languages").append(language); } }
body { text-align: left !important} #answer-list { padding: 10px; float: left; } #language-list { padding: 10px; float: left; } table thead { font-weight: bold; } table td { padding: 5px; }
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/codegolf/primary.css?v=f52df912b654"> <div id="language-list"> <h2>Winners by Language</h2> <table class="language-list"> <thead> <tr><td>Language</td><td>User</td><td>Score</td></tr> </thead> <tbody id="languages"> </tbody> </table> </div> <div id="answer-list"> <h2>Leaderboard</h2> <table class="answer-list"> <thead> <tr><td></td><td>Author</td><td>Language</td><td>Size</td></tr> </thead> <tbody id="answers"> </tbody> </table> </div> <table style="display: none"> <tbody id="answer-template"> <tr><td>{{PLACE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">{{SIZE}}</a></td></tr> </tbody> </table> <table style="display: none"> <tbody id="language-template"> <tr><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">{{SIZE}}</a></td></tr> </tbody> </table>

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    \$\begingroup\$ @isaacg No it doesn't. I think there would be some interesting languages where it's not obvious whether primality testing is possible. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 13:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ If the same program, such as "Hello, World!", is the shortest in many different and unrelated languages, should it be posted separately? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 15:33
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ @aditsu Yes, because there's no way anyone to find to the shortest version in an answer of an unrelated language. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 15:39
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ @mbomb007 Well it's hidden by default because the three code blocks take up a lot of space. I could minify them so that they are a single line each, but I'd rather keep the code maintainable in case bugs come up. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 19:34
  • 9
    \$\begingroup\$ @ETHproductions "Unlike our usual rules, feel free to use a language (or language version) even if it's newer than this challenge." Publishing the language and an implementation before posting it would definitely be helpful though. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 29, 2015 at 23:01

1021 Answers 1021

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VBS (Windows Script Host), 26 bytes

WScript.Echo "Hello, World!" 
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Scala, 63 bytes

object Main{def main(a:Array[String])=print("Hello, World!")} 

Try it online!

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  • \$\begingroup\$ an existing answer is shorter \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 4, 2019 at 2:14
  • \$\begingroup\$ That shorter answer doesn't work in tio. One of the requirements in this particular assignment was that each submission must be a full program. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 4, 2019 at 5:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also, that answer has extra \n in the string. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 4, 2019 at 5:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ The shorter one, sure. But not the longer one, which is still shorter than yours. Plus, yours is the one with extra newline, and incorrect capitalization for the W :| \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 4, 2019 at 10:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ You are right, that answer is better and provides full version that works in tio. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 4, 2019 at 17:52
1
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VTL-2, 21 bytes

1 ?="Hello, World!" 

? is the I/O system variable in VTL-2. Byte count may seem off, but line numbers are always two bytes, and the CR at the end of the line is mandatory and counted. Space between line numbers and commands is also mandatory.

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Keg, 15 bytes

Hello\, world\! 

Keg pushes all of the unrecognized commands onto the stack (with , and ! escaped). After the program terminates, it prints the content of the stack.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Now I feel bad. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 7:58
1
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33, 16 bytes

"Hello, World!"p 

But that's boring, isn't it? Let's try with functions, instead.

56 bytes

{"Hello"p}'Hello'{", "p}', '{"World"p}'World'{"!"pi}qqqq 

Here's something to be explained.

The string registers are initialised to "" when the interpreter starts. When the interpreter encounters a {, it copies all the code until the matching } and stores it as a function, labelled as what the destination string register was at the time (The destination string is set by single quotes).

Changes to the registers persist when changing stack frames (is that the right term?), so the explanation looks like this:

{ (Creates function "") "Hello" (Stores "Hello" in the source string register) p (Prints what is in the source string register) }'Hello'{ (Creates function "Hello") ", "p (Prints ", " after storing it in the source string register) }', '{ (Creates function ", ") "World"p (Prints "World" after storing it in the source string register) }'World'{ (Creates function "World") "!"p (Prints "!") i (Prints a newline) }q (Calls function "") q (Calls function "Hello") q (Calls function ", ") q (Calls function "World") 

This is a language I created. The source is in the link. I haven't made a Windows release of the interpreter yet, because I cannot figure out how to cross-compile. If you're on Windows, you'll have to compile it yourself.

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anyfix, 14 bytes

“Hello, World!” 

Simply the string, pushed onto the stack. Really boring.

(By the way, just use postfix for all operators in anyfix; this leads to the least confusion compared to infix modes and prefix modes, and anyfix is the easiest to understand in the postfix mode.)

TIO

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Simula (cim), 24 bytes

OutText("Hello, World!") 

Try it online!

Over 750 answers and we can still find languages not yet submitted. Wowsers.

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Intcode

Since Advent of Code will inevitably be adding more features to Intcode as this year's event progresses, I'll just treat the separate revisions as different languages, and add to this if a new one makes it shorter.

Day 2, N/A Bytes

Having no real way of outputting multiple values yet, the version in day 2 can't do a proper Hello World.

There is technically this 42-byte solution, but it feels like cheating because I'm pretty sure no interpreter can run it:

1,3,5,0,99,5735816763073854918203775149089 

This program copies that really long number to memory location 0 (which counts as output) and then halts. The really long number happens to be Hello, World! when read in bigendian form as a string.

Day 5, 89 Bytes

In day 5, dedicated I/O instructions are added, so a proper Hello World is possible. The ability to use immediate values doesn't hurt either.

104,72,104,101,104,108,4,5,104,111,104,44,104,32,104,87,4,9,104,114,4,5,104,100,104,33,99 
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Java, 82 bytes:

class Main{public static void main(String[]a){System.out.print("Hello, World!");}} 
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    \$\begingroup\$ @JoKing I think it's intended to be some kind of proof of the length - "look, it really is 82 bytes!" - but of course you could trivially verify the byte count by copy-pasting it into a text editor, so I agree that it's unnecessary. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 6, 2019 at 11:12
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Wren, 29 bytes

System.print("Hello, World!") 

Try it online!

Explanation

System.print( ) // Output the following string: "Hello, World!" // "Hello, World!" 
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Intcode, 83 72 70 bytes

204,8,109,1,1205,8,0,99,72,101,108,108,111,44,32,87,111,114,108,100,33 

Try it online!

Old 83 byte version:

1106,0,17,72,101,108,108,111,44,32,87,111,114,108,100,33,0,204,3,109,1,1205,3,17,99 
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  • \$\begingroup\$ Consider a TIO link using your own interpreter for now? like so \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 2:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ValueInk Done. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 2:31
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tq, 15 bytes

"Hello, World!" 

Pretty much just defines a list with the only item as the string "Hello, World!".

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KRC, 17 bytes

This defines a function returning the string "Hello, World!". No trailing newline because it's shorter. (I've made a repl.it for KRC.)

f="Hello, World!" 

Demo:

$ ./krc demo/hello Kent Recursive Calculator 1.0 revised 2016.03.31 /h for help krc> f! Hello, World!krc> 
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><>, 25 bytes

!v"!dlroW ,olleH"! o>l?!; 

Try it online!

My second answer in this language so far, started learning only today, thought this would be a good starting point

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Deadfish~, 1 byte

w 

Try it online!

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evil, 70 bytes

aeeeaeeewueuueweeueeuewwaaaweaaewaeaawueweeeaeeewaaawueeueweeaweeeueuw 

Try it online!

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    \$\begingroup\$ Just in case you missed it, there is a shorter evil solution, posted by my pronoun is monicareinstate 2 months ago. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 0:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ @manatwork oh whoops. does that mean I should take this down? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 12:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ No, there is nothing against such solutions. Mentioned it more as fun fact. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 15:51
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    \$\begingroup\$ Actually I also missed the relevant one: grc posted this exact evil solution 4 years 6 months ago. ☹ \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 21, 2020 at 2:47
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Scala 3, 34 bytes

@main def m=print("Hello, World!") 

Thought Dotty deserved its own answer.

Try it in Scastie

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kavod, 47 bytes

72#101#108#108#111#44#32#87#111#114#108#100#33# 

Try it online!

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Rust, 36 bytes

Extremely basic, and no explanation needed, but here:

fn main(){println!("Hello, World!")} 

If, for some reason, anyone would like to try it, you can here

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    \$\begingroup\$ Actually your code is 35 bytes long. But because the output must be exactly as required (including uppercase “W” and trailing “!”), the correct code's length will be 36. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 12:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks! I changed the byte number, and corrected the hello world \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 14:04
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Golunar, 66 bytes

142209095870573693396245504627320468349603549841832242891887476756 
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Python 3 + lkjqwhe, 8 bytes

import a 

Well, I beat It's-a-fake-one-Daniel. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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    \$\begingroup\$ You can get shorter names - qag hasn't been taken yet \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 17, 2021 at 1:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ausername I guess so, but it doesn't save bytes, and I'm too lazy to do so (not like it matters) \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 17, 2021 at 2:12
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Grok, 23 bytes

`jiHello, World! }lYW q 

Non-terminating version, 18 bytes

iHello, World!`lwh 
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Deadfish~, 1 byte

w 

Try it online!

Kind of cheating really... but then I think there are some zero byte answers!

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    \$\begingroup\$ This was already posted here last year, unfortunately :( we do technically allow duplicate answers, so it is up to you if you keep or remove it \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 20, 2021 at 19:58
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():;+-#?!, 26 bytes

:H:e:l:l:o:,: :w:o:r:l:d:! 

Try it online! (Node.js interpreter)

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Interesting! Is this your language? \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 14, 2021 at 7:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ophact no, I found it on the esolangs.org, you can click the link to know more \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 14, 2021 at 7:53
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EmojiCoder, 532 bytes

👋🔡🌚🌝🌚🌚🌝🌚🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚🌝🌚🌝 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌝🌝 👋🔡🌚🌚🌝🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌚🌝🌚🌚🌚🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌝 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌝🌝 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌝🌚🌚🌝🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌝🌝🌚🌚🌝🌚🌚 👋🔡🌚🌚🌝🌚🌚🌚🌚🌝 

Try it online!

EmojiCoder is a funny language!

🌚 represents binary 0 and 🌝 binary 1. We construct the binary numbers of ASCII codepoints in Hello, World!, then pass it to 🔡, which is a modifier automatically casting the binary number to decimal base and get its ASCII character and 👋 pushes it to stack, Later stack is implicitly outputted.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ 434 bytes by reusing 'l' and 'o'. This also corrects a capitalization error. Also, your description is incorrect, 👋 outputs a parameter, it does not push to the stack. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 13:31
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Knight, 16 bytes

O"Hello, World!" 

Knight is a language made up by some people on my Discord back in April 2021, which is designed to be portable to various programming languages.

Explanation

O is shorthand for OUTPUT, which prints the first argument.

I think you can figure out the rest.

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Wiselang, 20 bytes

(an esoteric language of mine and BLA4KM4MBA)

eww "Hello, World!"; 
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Lolwho.Cares, 35 bytes

>*2+00210v ^<0210<2`< Hello, World! 

Explanation:

The code is essentially a for loop; A counter increments, a character is then read from code. The program exits if this is 0 (end of line), or continues printing.

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Squire, 25 bytes

proclaim("Hello, World!") 

Whilst I hath already posteth a "FizzBuzz" program, being the absolute jester I am, I forgoteth to proclaim "Hello, World!" first.

Being themed upon ye olde medieval times, one does not simply "print" in Squire. One must proclaim.

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NOTE, 23 bytes

.print/"Hello, World!"\ 
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