Evolution of "Hello World!"

Answer 1 - Python

print("Hello World!")

There's got to be dozens of languages this could morph into.

Answer 59 - HTML

What? No HTML ??

<echo o[.]c;cat<<;#&&alert" ">Hello World!</vsh

Distance from Answer 58 : 6

Voodoo Magic ? Nah. Here is how it works:

You can have any arbitrary tag in HTML, so the first part <echo o[.]c;cat<<;#&&alert" "> is an echo tag, which now becomes a blank tag with no CSS applied by default by the browser.

The o[.]c;cat<<;#&&alert" " part is actually two properties set on that tag separated by space. So the first property has the key o[.]c;cat<<;#&&alert" and second key is " and both the values are blank.

Second part is just plain text Hello World! which is the text contents of the echo tag.

Next up, HTML tries to find the closing echo tag, but instead, finds a closing vsh tag. It then ignores the closing vsh tag (i.e. </vsh) and auto closes the echo tag.

Answer 95 - C

//[]([.]c;
main()    {
    puts("Hello World!");}
//#[;]#bye;dnl</>

Distance 7 from answer 94