True. Once I was working on a WPF app and someone looked at it and then showed me a simple YAML file they put together for Ansible and legit thought ‘YAML was better’ and what I was doing was dumb. They considered themselves a programmer.
Actually, there are plenty of interpreted programming languages, for example Perl or Shell Script so that definition is incorrect.
HTML is not a programming language because it only defines form (how things look), and does not control action (executing operations by itself).
The language for Web Development that controls the execution of operations (say: if the user fills a certain field, fetch related data from a server and display it in certain page areas) is called Javascript and is separate from HTML (which existed before Javascript and can exist without it).
Modern Web standards have also moved a lot of the form stuff to yet another language - CSS, Cascading Style Sheets - which is more powerful and reusable, so HTML is more used for the visual structure of the page and less for things like the fonts of the various pieces of text, though it still contains support for that stuff and you can still use it.
For all intents and purposes, a markup document is a script that outputs a document. There’s no point in saying the HTML isn’t a programming language. Not all languages have to be general purpose.
The bar for me is whether the language describes an executable program that has state and control flow.
You could perhaps be generous and describe the DOM as a (write-only) state and the parser as a control flow. I don’t, personally.
HTML is just a data container format to me. Belongs with the likes of XML, JSON, JPG, PNG, GIF, MP3, MOV, etc.
The umbrella term I’d use for all of these is “coding”. That’s the skill of understanding structured languages and format specifications, and understanding how you can and can’t piece things together to make something coherent. This is a critical requisite skill to programming. But programming is more.
Programming is the art of juggling of state and control flow in clever ways to trick funny rocks into computing something you don’t know. It doesn’t need to be general purpose, but I would argue it indeed needs to have a purpose. It has to be something more than just a pile of declarations you know from the outset. Otherwise it’s just structured data.
The umbrella term I’d use for all of these is “coding”.
Saying “it’s not programming it’s coding” is like engineer “it’s not dirt it’s soil” levels of pedantry that are silly to expect people outside your profession to know.
Sure. Which is why I would only make this distinction in a place where I can reasonably expect people to know better. Like, perhaps, a niche community on an experimental social media platform dedicated to programming.
Stateless functions still deal with state, they just don’t hold onto it. Without state to mutate, a so-called stateless function doesn’t do anything.
In declarative languages, your state is the sum of everything you’ve declared. You don’t query results out of thin air. Computational results logically conclude from everything you set up.
HTML ““has state””, as in it has a DOM, but it doesn’t do anything with it. You don’t mutate the DOM after it’s built, or query the DOM to compute results that weren’t trivially evident from the state you declared.
You can do those things with JavaScript. But all that proves is JavaScript is a programming language, and HTML is just a data format it can interact with.
Not really. If so, you might as well consider the stuff you can use to format a comment here on lemmy, as “programming”. That’s conceptually more similar to HTML as what programming actually is.
That’s such a weird point to make. Is it because to you, it seems like the line drawn is arbitrary? I cannot imagine any other reason. Certain words just mean certain things.
Markup languages are exactly as much “programming” as you marking a word and hitting “bold”. Which is to say, nothing at all. People are wrong all the time, and I have a very limited amount of fucks to give when it happens.
As for Scratch, it is a programming language. So, why would you think it’s a logical next step for me to say otherwise? Next, you’ll say something remarkably dumb in response. Resist the temptation, and do something more productive.
If he had said “LaTeX” or “roff”, that might have been a good example of something that blurs the line between the two. They aren’t specifically intended to be programming languages, but with a powerful enough macro system, a markup or typesetting language can be used in the same way as something like Brainfuck.
Absolutely. Those you suggest there are good examples.
Good enough that, instead of “is/isn’t” programming language, it would be more a “ah, so, how do you define that then?”. Now that I’ve had some sleep, one could argue that I could have been nicer and suggested that approach for HTML as well. After all, it’s just words that mean stuff, and transfer a concept between people, that translate to the same (ish) idea. The moment the latter isn’t the case, it’s no longer very useful for the former.
Most disagreements, I find, are just cases of different understandings. Discussions worth having is when either both are correct, or both want to figure out why they differ. So, on second thought, I think I was appropriately rude _
Both LaTeX and roff are Turing complete, but they are also DSLs with a somewhat narrow “domain”. Sounds exactly right that these blur the lines between what is/isn’t. You could even argue that claiming one or the other is just one way to express how you understand that difference.
To my knowledge, Scratch can save information away and retrieve it later. That’s enough to be programming. There are Theory of Computation reasons for this; it’s not an arbitrary distinction.
No. A form can’t do anything except send data to a server or get handled in the browser by Javascript (or Typescript or whatever). In either case, HTML is not capable of storing or retrieving anything on its own. It only provides an interface for potentially doing that.
As I said, not all programing languages are general purpose. Just because there are problems it can’t solve does not mean it’s not a programming language.
For the common folk working with a markup language is programming.
True. Once I was working on a WPF app and someone looked at it and then showed me a simple YAML file they put together for Ansible and legit thought ‘YAML was better’ and what I was doing was dumb. They considered themselves a programmer.
No. Markup languages are configuration for an interpreter.
inb4 code is configuration for a compiler and binary is configuration for a processor
Actually, there are plenty of interpreted programming languages, for example Perl or Shell Script so that definition is incorrect.
HTML is not a programming language because it only defines form (how things look), and does not control action (executing operations by itself).
The language for Web Development that controls the execution of operations (say: if the user fills a certain field, fetch related data from a server and display it in certain page areas) is called Javascript and is separate from HTML (which existed before Javascript and can exist without it).
Modern Web standards have also moved a lot of the form stuff to yet another language - CSS, Cascading Style Sheets - which is more powerful and reusable, so HTML is more used for the visual structure of the page and less for things like the fonts of the various pieces of text, though it still contains support for that stuff and you can still use it.
For all intents and purposes, a markup document is a script that outputs a document. There’s no point in saying the HTML isn’t a programming language. Not all languages have to be general purpose.
The bar for me is whether the language describes an executable program that has state and control flow.
You could perhaps be generous and describe the DOM as a (write-only) state and the parser as a control flow. I don’t, personally.
HTML is just a data container format to me. Belongs with the likes of XML, JSON, JPG, PNG, GIF, MP3, MOV, etc.
The umbrella term I’d use for all of these is “coding”. That’s the skill of understanding structured languages and format specifications, and understanding how you can and can’t piece things together to make something coherent. This is a critical requisite skill to programming. But programming is more.
Programming is the art of juggling of state and control flow in clever ways to trick funny rocks into computing something you don’t know. It doesn’t need to be general purpose, but I would argue it indeed needs to have a purpose. It has to be something more than just a pile of declarations you know from the outset. Otherwise it’s just structured data.
Saying “it’s not programming it’s coding” is like engineer “it’s not dirt it’s soil” levels of pedantry that are silly to expect people outside your profession to know.
Hey, maybe you are engineers after all lol
Sure. Which is why I would only make this distinction in a place where I can reasonably expect people to know better. Like, perhaps, a niche community on an experimental social media platform dedicated to programming.
That’d be nice, but it’s obvious who is and isn’t a programmer in this one.
So, writing stateless functions, or working in declarative languages doesn’t count?
There’s no such thing as a pure functional language. All it would accomplish is warming the CPU up. All such languages store data away at some point.
I didn’t say there is…
Your statement implies it. Having stateless or declarative functions that never store or retrieve data would mean they are pure functions.
Stateless functions still deal with state, they just don’t hold onto it. Without state to mutate, a so-called stateless function doesn’t do anything.
In declarative languages, your state is the sum of everything you’ve declared. You don’t query results out of thin air. Computational results logically conclude from everything you set up.
HTML ““has state””, as in it has a DOM, but it doesn’t do anything with it. You don’t mutate the DOM after it’s built, or query the DOM to compute results that weren’t trivially evident from the state you declared.
You can do those things with JavaScript. But all that proves is JavaScript is a programming language, and HTML is just a data format it can interact with.
Not really. If so, you might as well consider the stuff you can use to format a comment here on lemmy, as “programming”. That’s conceptually more similar to HTML as what programming actually is.
some title
Ooo hyperlink
Etc.
Yeah… there are macros to handle formatting. Next you’ll say Scratch isn’t programming either.
That’s such a weird point to make. Is it because to you, it seems like the line drawn is arbitrary? I cannot imagine any other reason. Certain words just mean certain things.
Markup languages are exactly as much “programming” as you marking a word and hitting “bold”. Which is to say, nothing at all. People are wrong all the time, and I have a very limited amount of fucks to give when it happens.
As for Scratch, it is a programming language. So, why would you think it’s a logical next step for me to say otherwise? Next, you’ll say something remarkably dumb in response. Resist the temptation, and do something more productive.
If he had said “LaTeX” or “roff”, that might have been a good example of something that blurs the line between the two. They aren’t specifically intended to be programming languages, but with a powerful enough macro system, a markup or typesetting language can be used in the same way as something like Brainfuck.
Absolutely. Those you suggest there are good examples.
Good enough that, instead of “is/isn’t” programming language, it would be more a “ah, so, how do you define that then?”. Now that I’ve had some sleep, one could argue that I could have been nicer and suggested that approach for HTML as well. After all, it’s just words that mean stuff, and transfer a concept between people, that translate to the same (ish) idea. The moment the latter isn’t the case, it’s no longer very useful for the former.
Most disagreements, I find, are just cases of different understandings. Discussions worth having is when either both are correct, or both want to figure out why they differ. So, on second thought, I think I was appropriately rude _
Both LaTeX and roff are Turing complete, but they are also DSLs with a somewhat narrow “domain”. Sounds exactly right that these blur the lines between what is/isn’t. You could even argue that claiming one or the other is just one way to express how you understand that difference.
To my knowledge, Scratch can save information away and retrieve it later. That’s enough to be programming. There are Theory of Computation reasons for this; it’s not an arbitrary distinction.
Yes, markdown is as much programming as HTML.
If a language can’t store information and retrieve it later, then there is a limit to its usefulness. There are problems it cannot solve.
That’s OK, because not every language needs to be do that in order to serve its niche, but it’s not a programming language.
Isn’t that what a form is?
No. A form can’t do anything except send data to a server or get handled in the browser by Javascript (or Typescript or whatever). In either case, HTML is not capable of storing or retrieving anything on its own. It only provides an interface for potentially doing that.
As I said, not all programing languages are general purpose. Just because there are problems it can’t solve does not mean it’s not a programming language.
Yes, that’s exactly what it means.