There’s a literary reference as well. Remember the delicate and understated lowercase beginning of the evergreen first program. Most other programming examples get this wrong and I miss it sorely:
hello, world.
My guess is it refers to archy and mehitabel, very popular early 20th century free verse poetry by Don Marquis. His work was still very much in favor with intellectuals around the time of B’s creation. Or it might have been influenced by the poet e.e. cummings.
