Maya scripting

I was curious to find out why all the options is said to have programming and found out that maya uses a programming language called MEL. You place the code at the bottom and go to command > execute or ctrl+z. The output will be shown at the top. I try by running this code (print "This isn't so hard.";). I learn that some say MEL is like programming C++ but the line i run looks more like actionscript.