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Yes thank you for using 1200 words to state the obvious.
Ah yes, journalist word salad.
No, HTML is not a programming language. We all know this. The definition of programming is: "creating a sequence of instructions to enable the computer to do something" - which HTML does not do. Defining HTML as a programming language is like defining a plain .txt file as a programming language. You can open it in your browser, the computer is "running" it, but it's not doing anything. The underlying rendering engine of HTML is what's doing the work rendering your markup.
I suspect this is the author trying to quell his cognitive dissonance at not knowing how to write code for actual programming languages. Perhaps it's his ego invoking that fear... "I don't know something I want to know, so I must rationalize something I do know as being more than it is."
I suppose it's a good article for engagement - for journalist types to send to each other to feel better about their lack of knowing how to write code, and for developers to chuckle.
This is the core reason why HTML isn't considered a programming language. It's not designed to be Turing-complete which is a key aspect of programming languages.
That being said, HTML+CSS is unintentionally Turing-complete: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-co...
The article seems to simply assume that only programming languages have value, then argue that since HTML has value, that it is a programming language. EDIT: It's a very common logical confusion. Just because someone says "HTML is bad because it's not a programming language" but you think HTML is good doesn't mean that HTML is a programming language. The first person could just be wrong about there being a connection…
HTML can be used to tell different devices in different contexts what to display and how to display it. It serves as a sort of general DSL, which is a bit of an oxymoron and does come remarkably close to describing a programming language.
The article seems to simply assume that only programming languages have value, then argue that since HTML has value, that it is a programming language. EDIT: It's a very common logical confusion. Just because someone says "HTML is bad because it's not a programming language" but you think HTML is good doesn't mean that HTML is a programming language. The first person could just be wrong about there being a connection…
For SQL you are not instructing the computer what to do, you're describing the rules and structure of the result that you want in some coded language such that an execution engine can determine how to deliver the expected result.
For HTML you're not instructing the renderer what to do, you're describing the rules and structure of the result that you want in some coded language such that the rendering engine can determine how to deliver the expected result.
If I'm wrong, I would be very happy to be corrected because I've argued this for a long time with people who don't know what a programming language paradigm is - so I'd like to know if I'm mistaken.
> Because HTML looks easy and lacks features like formal conditional logic and Turing-completeness, it’s often dismissed as not a programming language. Uh, yes? It's _not_ a programming language, it's a markup language. It's kind of in the name.
It's a declarative programming language. Saying it's "in the name" is a meme, it was named that before it supported scripting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HTML can be used to tell different devices in different contexts what to display and how to display it. It serves as a sort of general DSL, which is a bit of an oxymoron and does come remarkably close to describing a programming language.
That's not really what's going on though. Semantically, it is a type of document that browsers to display in certain ways. A HTML isn't really programming your web browser any more than a .wav file is "programming your audio player". I suppose though, semantics are ultimately made up, and we can indeed choose to flip it such that documents are actually programs for platforms that are the document browsers
Also not any more than a .c file is "programming your compiler" nor a binary executable is "programming your operating system" nor an operating system is "programming your hardware" nor hardware is "programming mathematics". Disclaiming HTML as a programming language when it is actually powerful for programming comes across to me as a No True Scotsman argument about "real" programming languages being used to program only in some contexts or to make only some things as the program.
I agree that it's a matter of semantics but I also understand HTML to be a programming language, semantically. It seems to me that where one draws the line for programming language is always going to be arbitrary unless one is willing to see that a language being used to program in some context is a programming language.