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If a kid makes a cool web page by hand coding html they can call it code. Better to encourage people.

by 7952 7y ago

kragen 7y ago
Sure, HTML is code, just like binary notation for numbers (as commenter breck pointed out). It's just not a programming language. I agree about encouraging people but I don't think that dishonesty is a good way to do it --- they get discouraged and doubt themselves when they inevitably learn that their earlier achievements were faked.
- username90 7y ago
  Writing code to make a computer do something is programming. HTML is a language used to make a computer do something. Hence it is a programming language. People writing HTML are programming. It is however not a general purpose programming language. Note that writing a Word document is not programming, since people are not writing directly in the language, instead Word generates the code for them. What people see in Word is not a language since it doesn't have a textual representation, and people don¨t write word files directly in docx format.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Your arguments were thoroughly demolished in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906267 before you posted, although you've added a particularly delicious couple of new errors: > Note that writing a Word document is not programming, since people are not writing directly in the language, instead Word generates the code for them By this argument, writing a program in C is not programming either. (This was the sales pitch for FORTRAN: you could fire all your programmers, because the FORTRAN compiler would generate the code for you.) > What people see in Word is not a language since it doesn't have a textual representation This is a particularly amusing error, quite aside from the fact that XML is a textual representation. I suppose programming in Scratch and Labview by this definition isn't "programming" --- while apparently writing HTML would be! Plain ASCII text files have a variety of advantages and disadvantages; it's a standardized, very simple format with half a century of compatible history behind it (and more, if you consider plain text files in other encodings), without extreme limitations. So there are a lot of languages defined in terms of plain ASCII text files rather than OLE containers or whatever, including most popular programming languages, as well as XML, HTML, RFC-822 email, CSV, URLs, and so on. But, as should be obvious, the encoding of your program is entirely orthogonal to the expressivity of the programming language!

If a kid makes a cool web page by hand coding html they can call it code. Better to encourage people.

by 7952 7y ago

If a kid makes a cool web page by hand coding html they can call it code. Better to encourage people.

Sure, HTML is code, just like binary notation for numbers (as commenter breck pointed out). It's just not a programming language. I agree about encouraging people but I don't think that dishonesty is a good way to do it --- they get discouraged and doubt themselves when they inevitably learn that their earlier achievements were faked.

username90 7y ago
Writing code to make a computer do something is programming. HTML is a language used to make a computer do something. Hence it is a programming language. People writing HTML are programming. It is however not a general purpose programming language. Note that writing a Word document is not programming, since people are not writing directly in the language, instead Word generates the code for them. What people see in Word is not a language since it doesn't have a textual representation, and people don¨t write word files directly in docx format.
- kragen 7y ago
  Your arguments were thoroughly demolished in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906267 before you posted, although you've added a particularly delicious couple of new errors: > Note that writing a Word document is not programming, since people are not writing directly in the language, instead Word generates the code for them By this argument, writing a program in C is not programming either. (This was the sales pitch for FORTRAN: you could fire all your programmers, because the FORTRAN compiler would generate the code for you.) > What people see in Word is not a language since it doesn't have a textual representation This is a particularly amusing error, quite aside from the fact that XML is a textual representation. I suppose programming in Scratch and Labview by this definition isn't "programming" --- while apparently writing HTML would be! Plain ASCII text files have a variety of advantages and disadvantages; it's a standardized, very simple format with half a century of compatible history behind it (and more, if you consider plain text files in other encodings), without extreme limitations. So there are a lot of languages defined in terms of plain ASCII text files rather than OLE containers or whatever, including most popular programming languages, as well as XML, HTML, RFC-822 email, CSV, URLs, and so on. But, as should be obvious, the encoding of your program is entirely orthogonal to the expressivity of the programming language!