The root cause is: HTML on a page have to loaded before javascript code. Resolving in 2 ways:
1) Allow HTML load before the js code.
<script type ="text/javascript">
window.onload = function what(){
document.getElementById('hello').innerHTML = 'hi';
}
</script>
//or set time out like this:
<script type ="text/javascript">
setTimeout(function(){
what();
function what(){
document.getElementById('hello').innerHTML = 'hi';
};
}, 50);
//NOTE: 50 is milisecond.
</script>
2) Move js code under HTML code
<div id="hello"></div>
<script type ="text/javascript">
what();
function what(){
document.getElementById('hello').innerHTML = 'hi';
};
</script>