Where did 42 come from in the programming world? [closed]

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I see 42 used A LOT in the programming world as examples. In screencasts, tutorials, etc.

Where did the popularity of this number come from?

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It is from the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Wikipedia has more detail:

In [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy], a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. The Ultimate Question itself is unknown.

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You forgot to read The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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It's a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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It's the answer.

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Douglas Adams came up with it and as mentioned it's a reference to THGTTG. Back in the day, programmers were more "geeky" than they are now. Generally they were math geeks. Being extremely geeky would put you in line with Douglas Adams' books. If you look for it, you'll find it everywhere. Where did I put my towel?