It's one thing to type code that produces a "Hello World" message on your display, but quite another to make the gesture as grandly as one German programmer, who cut a wheat field in Semacode to display the classic message.

I remember my first C++ programming class during my budding years as a computer nerd. The first in-class project was to write code that included iostream.h and output "Hello, World!" to our monitors; it's a common project for beginner programmers as they start to learn a new language, but I've never seen it done quite like this. I'll stop complaining about mowing my yard now.

The German programmer, Ben Hopfeng-Aertner, wrote in Semacode, a type of visual code that contains "machine readable information" that can be used to graphically encode web-links. Since the code is visual, Ben was able to take a picture of his 160 square meter programming artwork from an airplane and have a machine read the code to output the words "Hello, World!"

Ben also created a Google Earth file so that anyone can download his project and see his work in its native landscape. He doesn't mention how long it took him but, judging by pictures that include Winter and Spring shots, it looks like the project took at least a few months to complete. No word on whether he's opening up his own landscape/coding business.

For more information on this project, check out Ben's web site or Flickr page.