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Honestly, I was expecting this article to go a completely different way. Namely, I expected it to talk about how <canvas> is Turing complete (and therefore, sho

Honestly, I was expecting this article to go a completely different way. Namely, I expected it to talk about how <canvas> is Turing complete (and therefore, should be valid consideration as a programming language as much as LaTeX or Cxx templates are). There's certainly use in confronting elitism and FUD, but having a technical kernel (see what I did there? :P) of truth supporting a more abstract argument would be far more compelling imho. I'd really love to see more discussions about <canvas> and what it means for the future of HTML as a language (and whether or not it will come to be a more fully-fledged programming language itself).

eurleif 11y ago
<canvas> doesn't do anything by itself; you draw on it using JavaScript. Someone could argue that because JS can be embedded in HTML, it's really a part of HTML, which makes HTML a programming language; but the HTML standard does not require JS support, and most browsers have an option to disable support, so I think they are separable.
- halosghost 11y ago
  Imho, your latter statement would be true except for the inclusion of <canvas> which is there specifically to allow it to be manipulated by JS. You are, of course, correct though, <canvas> is not actually Turing complete without JS; but then a Turing machine cannot operate without both the ticker tape and the pen to write on it. Given that, JS + <canvas> seems to be a near perfect analog to a Turing machine to me. (Though, I can think of numerous ways that someone might disagree.) Either way, I would still like to see more in-depth analyses of this interaction; and I find it odd that a discussion of HTML as a programming language would make no mention of it whatsoever.
  - BraveNewCurency 11y ago
    If you have JavaScript (obviously Turning complete by itself), why do you need canvas?
mrj 11y ago
And yet he attacks elitism with his particular kind of elitism. I'm not sure this is at all useful. "Go get some more education at an institution other than a glorified vocational training center."
- brudgers 11y ago
  I believe that "glorified vocational training center" is a self-depreciating reference to the author's home institution, MIT. I suspect that other members of the MIT community were the first order audience for the article and the thrust of his critique is that claims that HTML is not a programming language are structured as arguments from authority. What makes (print "Hello World") ; MIT/GNU Scheme a proper program, and <p>Hello World</p> something else seems more rooted in opinion than any intrinsic difference.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Well, one can be compiled to an independent binary that can load and run on a variety of machines. The other requires a large application infrastructure to run at all. Commonly they are lightyears apart. Its easy to see why one would be called a language and the other, not.
    - dllthomas 11y ago
      "[O]ne can be compiled to an independent binary that can load and run on a variety of machines. The other requires a large application infrastructure to run at all." That seems more a matter of current tooling, not anything about the languages themselves. Did Java only become a programming language when someone wrote a compiler to machine code? Is perl more in the same category as C or as HTML? Quite a few languages dynamically link a runtime, and most are dependent on OS facilities that could be extended to handle HTML.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        HTML will never run standalone, right? Its designed to run in a very rich environment.

eurleif 11y ago

<canvas> doesn't do anything by itself; you draw on it using JavaScript. Someone could argue that because JS can be embedded in HTML, it's really a part of HTML, which makes HTML a programming language; but the HTML standard does not require JS support, and most browsers have an option to disable support, so I think they are separable.

halosghost 11y ago
Imho, your latter statement would be true except for the inclusion of <canvas> which is there specifically to allow it to be manipulated by JS. You are, of course, correct though, <canvas> is not actually Turing complete without JS; but then a Turing machine cannot operate without both the ticker tape and the pen to write on it. Given that, JS + <canvas> seems to be a near perfect analog to a Turing machine to me. (Though, I can think of numerous ways that someone might disagree.) Either way, I would still like to see more in-depth analyses of this interaction; and I find it odd that a discussion of HTML as a programming language would make no mention of it whatsoever.
- BraveNewCurency 11y ago
  If you have JavaScript (obviously Turning complete by itself), why do you need canvas?

mrj 11y ago

And yet he attacks elitism with his particular kind of elitism. I'm not sure this is at all useful. "Go get some more education at an institution other than a glorified vocational training center."

brudgers 11y ago
I believe that "glorified vocational training center" is a self-depreciating reference to the author's home institution, MIT. I suspect that other members of the MIT community were the first order audience for the article and the thrust of his critique is that claims that HTML is not a programming language are structured as arguments from authority. What makes (print "Hello World") ; MIT/GNU Scheme a proper program, and <p>Hello World</p> something else seems more rooted in opinion than any intrinsic difference.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Well, one can be compiled to an independent binary that can load and run on a variety of machines. The other requires a large application infrastructure to run at all. Commonly they are lightyears apart. Its easy to see why one would be called a language and the other, not.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    "[O]ne can be compiled to an independent binary that can load and run on a variety of machines. The other requires a large application infrastructure to run at all." That seems more a matter of current tooling, not anything about the languages themselves. Did Java only become a programming language when someone wrote a compiler to machine code? Is perl more in the same category as C or as HTML? Quite a few languages dynamically link a runtime, and most are dependent on OS facilities that could be extended to handle HTML.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      HTML will never run standalone, right? Its designed to run in a very rich environment.