Senseless, uselessm, irritates

you know you can delete the plugin if you don’t want it?

The plugin was meant to act as a teaching tool and as Geoffrey pointed out, it’s easy enough to delete. I really don’t think that it merits a single star rating.

So why there aren’t delivered ALL plugins with WP ? As I can delete all the stuff I don’t need, that would be best !
sorry for sarcasm, but to argue “you can delete” doesn’t hit my point:
It may be a funny joke, but NOBODY really NEEDS this plugin.
So why WP delivers things nobody needs ?
For now I made 4 WP-installation, deleting useless stuff is ALWAYS annoying.
For what this plugin “was meant to” in earlier times is irrelevant, IMHO.

The plugin is intended to be used as a starting point for WordPress plugin developers. The plugin PHP code is akin to a Hello World program.

Perhaps you do not develop plugins with WordPress, and you find this plugin of little value. But there are other beginning plugin developers that may find Hello Dolly an essential resource to get started, so you cannot say that “nobody needs” it.

I for one am glad that it’s present OOTB. I needed to do something quickly and instead of trying to make/package up a plugin, I simply hijacked Hello Dolly, made the script I wanted and added the required add_action() call.

IMHO, it seems a small price to pay for having a decent jumping-off point when someone new to WP needs to try their hand at customizing their WP install, without having to do lots of heavy lifting.

So even today, it was useful in the way it “was meant to” be. Earlier times, indeed. ??