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XHTML Club

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Re: XHTML Club

#121

Post by jraph »

MrJohz wrote: post #119
jraph wrote: post #2

In the linked article: > you should master the HTML programming¹ language The footnote reads: > 1. This is a common debate - but for simplicity sake I'm just calling it this. It's not really a debate, HTML is a markup language [1], not a programming language: you annotate a document with its structure and its formatting. You are not really programming when you write HTML (the markup is not procedural) (and this is no…

Of course HTML is a programming language. It's one of the languages I use every day to program with. I'm not sure what the definition of a programming language would be beyond that. Do you mean "Turing-complete" language? Or maybe "procedural programming language"? I agree HTML isn't either of those, but those aren't the be-all and end-all of programming now, are they?

I, and most of us, mean a language in which one can express a computer program, which is a set of instructions for a computer to execute. You don't execute an HTML file, you display it, render it. You can't implement fizz buzz in HTML. At best, you mark up its output. With HTML, you don't instruct, you describe. You instruct what to do with JavaScript, or Python, or whatever programming languages you use client or server side.

A programming language doesn't need to be procedural, it can be functional, or use another computationally equivalent paradigm. I'm not quite sure it needs to be Turing complete, but possibly.

A programming language lets you express to some processor that provides a set of computation primitives what to do with the memory cells you have at your disposal, and in general it lets you deal with input and output.

If you consider any language you program with to be a programming language, then CSS, JSON, YAML, XML, markdown (that's what your readme is likely written in) and even English (that's what you use to express the specs, the bugs, maybe your notes / drafts, the comments, possibly the language the singer of the songs you're listening to while programming use) or UML need to be programming languages too. That's not quite useful. "Program with" is too large and would make the "programming" qualifier largely useless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14512218/is-html5-a-prog...

Re: XHTML Club

#122

Post by jraph »

7bit wrote: post #120
jraph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will never find a HTML6 or higher You might be right, but we don't know yet. Microsoft said that for Windows 10. You might also be right that the current Living Standard specification doesn't really call it HTML5, but you'll find many people writing HTML for a living say HTML5 to refer to it, and telling them that HTML5 doesn't exist doesn't really help and is a bit wrong too if you have a descriptive approach…

Microsoft never said that, that's a myth/common misconception

Okay, at least I haven't dreamed it: [1]

> Although Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be the last Windows version, eventually a new major release, Windows 11, was announced in 2021.

Where does the misconception come from? Do you know where I could read about it?

edit: it seems you are right, a dev said Windows 10 was the "last version of Windows" which was true but was interpreted as being an absolute statement when he really probably meant "at this time".

Thanks for correcting me!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_version_hist...

Re: XHTML Club

#123

Post by JimDabell »

netsharc wrote: post #34

> Validation is ignored, and most modern sites are built with little concern for structure or longevity. I remember going online with a modem in the 90s. There was a new ISP in town, but their homepage took forever to load. I viewed the source, and whatever page generator they were rendered the page as HTML tables (this was fine back then), and added repetitive style tags to every table cell instead of using CSS (alt…

> whatever page generator they were rendered the page as HTML tables (this was fine back then), and added repetitive style tags to every table cell instead of using CSS

Apart from the fact that very few people understood CSS back then, there was a stupendous amount of really weird bugs. For instance, I remember having a simple th { font-size: … } rule, and some versions of Netscape 4 somehow managed to apply the font size to all cells except for the third one. So workarounds like extra style attributes were added to fix things like this.

Re: XHTML Club

#124

Post by JimDabell »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3
jraph wrote: post #2

In the linked article: > you should master the HTML programming¹ language The footnote reads: > 1. This is a common debate - but for simplicity sake I'm just calling it this. It's not really a debate, HTML is a markup language [1], not a programming language: you annotate a document with its structure and its formatting. You are not really programming when you write HTML (the markup is not procedural) (and this is no…

I dunno, you're being pedantic :) Yes yes, the name clearly ends up "Markup Language" so yeah, with a very strict definition of programming languages, HTML is not one of them. But if we use a broader definition, basically "a formal language that specifies behavior a machine must execute", then HTML is indeed a programming language. HTML is not only about annotating documents or formatting, it can do things you expect…

> behavior a machine must execute

This is not what HTML does. Tags are not instructions, they delimit the start and end of elements. They describe content, they do not specify behaviour.

In your pattern example, that is still just a description of what is acceptable input. It doesn’t execute anything. A paper form might specify the format DD / MM / YYYY but that doesn‘t mean the form is executing a program in your brain when you fill it out.

Re: XHTML Club

#125

Post by mediumsmart »

radicalethics wrote: post #69
direwolf20 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically the design of PHP with different syntax. Nobody uses PHP this way any more though — people treat it like Python or Node and write the entire codebase inside a big JSP is similar with different syntax again — nobody uses JSP either I think ASP too but I never used that

If HTML was never able to be the full solution, then I guess if I had to expand on where I'm going, then what the heck are we even doing with this html thing? Either MAKE IT like PHP, ditch it, or do something, anything.

> Either MAKE IT like PHP, ditch it, or do something, anything.

Do nothing so I can make websites that are accessible, secure, static and fast. HTML is the full solution unlike PHP or JS. With CSS it’s Turing complete.

Re: XHTML Club

#126

Post by MrJohz »

jraph wrote: post #121
MrJohz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course HTML is a programming language. It's one of the languages I use every day to program with. I'm not sure what the definition of a programming language would be beyond that. Do you mean "Turing-complete" language? Or maybe "procedural programming language"? I agree HTML isn't either of those, but those aren't the be-all and end-all of programming now, are they?

I, and most of us, mean a language in which one can express a computer program, which is a set of instructions for a computer to execute. You don't execute an HTML file, you display it, render it. You can't implement fizz buzz in HTML. At best, you mark up its output. With HTML, you don't instruct, you describe. You instruct what to do with JavaScript, or Python, or whatever programming languages you use client or se…

An HTML file is a set of instructions to execute. They're very high-level, declarative instructions for describing a UI, similar to how SQL is high-level declarative instructions for describing a set of data to be loaded, or how Prolog is a high-level declarative set of instructions for describing a set of logical axioms, but they're still instructions. You pass them to an execution engine, and on the basis of the instructions you've written, the engine does something. (See e.g. the section on fourth generation PLs in the second link you gave.)

More broadly, I think this discussion is a stupid one. There is no formal, mathematically precise definition of a programming language. There are formal definitions of lots of PL-related things, and for what a language is in general (a combination of syntax and semantics), but there's no formal definition of the term "programming language" that's useful here.

So if we're not arguing about a formal definition, then we're arguing about essentially our favourite dictionaries, and how we personally interpret our favourite dictionaries. And that's just not a useful argument at all, it's not even how dictionaries are meant to work! And yet whenever someone dares to write "HTML programming language" or something similar, there is always a comment from someone demanding that the author use their personal dictionary, and correct their changes. And it is deeply grating, because whenever I see this happen:

* The original statement is never ambiguous. I have never seen a situation where referring to HTML as a programming language has ever caused some sort of confusion.

* The discussion about whether HTML is a programming language is almost always completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, and bringing it up adds no value to the discussion.

* The author's definition is usually inconsistent anyway. Which isn't a problem — I don't imagine my mental definition of a programming language is entirely consistent either — but it's dumb watching someone try and correct other people without understanding their own definition enough to be able to respond to clarifying questions.

In your original comment, you said "it's not really a debate", and that's completely correct. It's not a debate because there's no right answer. There's not even any value to a right answer. The matter is entirely a question of terminology. And if different choices of terminology make things unclear, then it might be worth clarifying that terminology, but here I don't think the author could have been any clearer at all about what they were trying to communicate.

Re: XHTML Club

#127

Post by recursivedoubts »

jraph wrote: post #2

In the linked article: > you should master the HTML programming¹ language The footnote reads: > 1. This is a common debate - but for simplicity sake I'm just calling it this. It's not really a debate, HTML is a markup language [1], not a programming language: you annotate a document with its structure and its formatting. You are not really programming when you write HTML (the markup is not procedural) (and this is no…

consider the following:

https://html-lang.org/

Re: XHTML Club

#128

Post by 7bit »

jraph wrote: post #122
7bit wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft never said that, that's a myth/common misconception

Okay, at least I haven't dreamed it: [1] > Although Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be the last Windows version, eventually a new major release, Windows 11, was announced in 2021. Where does the misconception come from? Do you know where I could read about it? edit: it seems you are right, a dev said Windows 10 was the "last version of Windows" which was true but was interpreted as being an absolute statement when…

Answering after your edit:

Yes, Jerry Nixon claimed something like that (he's not just a dev though). But Microsoft never confirmed that, so it's just a statement by one person.

The Wikipedia quote is problematic, because it doesn't reference any sources for their claim. Whoever the author of that paragraph, it's journalistically bad practice not providing any sources to that claim.

Re: XHTML Club

#129

Post by jraph »

7bit wrote: post #128
jraph wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, at least I haven't dreamed it: [1] > Although Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be the last Windows version, eventually a new major release, Windows 11, was announced in 2021. Where does the misconception come from? Do you know where I could read about it? edit: it seems you are right, a dev said Windows 10 was the "last version of Windows" which was true but was interpreted as being an absolute statement when…

Answering after your edit: Yes, Jerry Nixon claimed something like that (he's not just a dev though). But Microsoft never confirmed that, so it's just a statement by one person. The Wikipedia quote is problematic, because it doesn't reference any sources for their claim. Whoever the author of that paragraph, it's journalistically bad practice not providing any sources to that claim.

Yeah, we can find quotes from various articles on the web and I did between writing my comment and my edit (I was on the phone, I didn't bother citing them here).

Wikipedia articles should source everything indeed, it's not that it's bad practice, it's against the idea of Wikipedia not to.

Re: XHTML Club

#130

Post by jraph »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #127
jraph wrote: post #2

In the linked article: > you should master the HTML programming¹ language The footnote reads: > 1. This is a common debate - but for simplicity sake I'm just calling it this. It's not really a debate, HTML is a markup language [1], not a programming language: you annotate a document with its structure and its formatting. You are not really programming when you write HTML (the markup is not procedural) (and this is no…

consider the following: https://html-lang.org/

Oh yes, this is "HTML, the programming language", not HTML (also called "HTML, the markup language" in that page).

And it's brilliant :-)

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