Quote:
It depends on the context whether or not I would call HTML a programming
language. If I was talking to my mom about it or something, who is not a
programmer at all, then for all practical purposes it's a programming language.
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I'm guilty here, at least in the past. The colloquially accurate term you're
looking for is "coding" This allows you to maintain professionally accurate
discourse without compromising populist appeal.
Sometimes it is easier to allow a luddite to run off with their very confused
sense of technology rather than combat their cognitive dissonance. Dissonance
originating in the need to distance themselves from technology whilst making an
effort to solve a technological problem. This is a tragically missed opportunity and failure of the technically literate, though it is inevitable.
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Words are just tools used to communicate. They don't determine what's real or
unreal. You guys look at the words "programming language" and think that it has
some kind of inherent reality, but it only means what the person using it
intends for it to mean, no more, no less.
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The term "programming language" does indeed have an agreed upon inherent
reality, which is very useful when working in mass to solve highly technical
dilemmas.
Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post Every word has a fixed definition,
otherwise it would be impossible to communicate.
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Definitions are only fixed by
convention, and we don't have to behave according to convention if we don't want
to. Not to mention it's never certain whether one person's definition is exactly
the same as another's. Misunderstandings happen all the time due to this.
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Here's a joke:
A descriptivist was taking an evening stroll with his lady whereupon they happened by some six
descriptivists beating up a prescriptivist. The girlfriend exclaims "Aren't you
going to do something!??" To which our intrepid descriptivist replies "No, I'm
sure six are enough."
Matt, you are taking descriptivist linguistic philosophy into a bar full of
prescriptivism. I say prescriptivism rather than prescriptivists, because in
fact most folks around here are really only concerned with colloquial language
so long as it gets the point across. However, the application and adherence to
prescriptivism within our chosen field of expertise (not linguistic philosophy)
is not something to take lightly nor get combative about. You must adhere to
agreed upon technical terminology in order to be successful among your
peers within a technical field.
HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language, like xml or tex, it
has no programmatic features. HTML may be expressed as a subset of xml, but this
is not the case with tex. Javascript and PHP are often used to add programmatic
functionality to the hypertext markup of plaintext and in such a case might in fact,
be referred to as programming, however html coding by itself may not accurately
be labeled programming as html is not a programming language. These distinctions
are fundamental to the communication of nuanced technical concepts within the field of computer science. To define technical terminology as some wishy washy application
of descriptivism is not only a pox on the field of both linguistic philosophy
and computer science, it is arguably a foolish attempt to undermine the
entirety of professional communication.
To wit, might I recommend you vote for perl?
