Subject: Re: becoming a better programmer
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 16 Sep 2002 19:13:25 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.perl.misc
Message-ID: <3241192405599005@naggum.no>

* Matthew Denner
| HTML is not a programming language.  In fact, it's name tells you that:
| Hyper-Text Markup Language.  So it's a markup language, nothing more,
| nothing less.  The failure is not really to with knowing the difference,
| it's all these damn acronyms and peoples inability to remember what they
| stand for.

  HTML is based in SGML, which is only a syntax.  It has no semantics at all.
  If you wanted to, you could implement a programming language with the syntax
  of SGML (or XML).  Some people who believe even harder in living forever
  than I do so they do not have to prioritize anything in their lives, have
  actually done this.  HTML has chosen not to do one crucial thing for a
  programming language: define user abstractions (like functions, macros).
  Even XML alone falls short here, but a given XML application can of course
  invent ways to define new elements and perhaps even what to do with them.

| Having said that though, I do sometimes wonder if the line between languages
| has not become a little blurred.

  It has always been blurred, but all that means is that there exist languages
  that are hard to categorize because they are viewed from several vantage
  points, not that the categories overlap or are ill-defined concepts.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.