Is there a GIS "Hello World" Equivalent?

Perhaps these books from Pragmatic Programmers could help you:

Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools

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GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications

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You could start with some basic desktop mapping software like uDig or Quantum GIS. And download some Shape files.

From there you might want to take a look at PostGIS. For web development start with MapServer and OpenLayers.

Would also be worth taking a look at the book Mapping Hacks.

If your company has ESRI software I'd recommend getting ArcMap, opening up the VBA editor and copying and pasting a few simple code samples from the help files.

If you don't have desktop software try out http://openlayers.org/ the open source equivalent of Google Maps. It has a nice API and samples.

I'd say the equivalent of "Hello World" in GIS is clicking on a map and popping up a message box with the latitude and longtitude of the click.

Let's give it a try:

Polylines:

(   0, 100), ( 0,     0), (   0,  50), (  80,  50), (  80,   0), (  80, 100)
( 180, 100), ( 100, 100), ( 100,  50), ( 140,  50), ( 100,  50), ( 100,   0), ( 180,   0)
( 200, 100), ( 200,   0), ( 280,   0)
( 300, 100), ( 300,   0), ( 380,   0)
( 400,  50), ( 440, 100), ( 480,  50), ( 440,   0), ( 400,  50)
( 600, 100), ( 620,   0), ( 640,  50), ( 660,   0), ( 680, 100)
( 700,  50), ( 740, 100), ( 780,  50), ( 740,   0), ( 700,  50)
( 800,   0), ( 800, 100), ( 880,  75), ( 800,  50), ( 880,   0)
( 900, 100), ( 900,   0), ( 980,   0)
(1000,   0), (1000, 100), (1080,  50), (1000,   0)