from Hacker News

HTML Is a Programming Language. Fight Me

by TheIronYuppie on 1/7/25, 6:58 AM with 30 comments

  • by rumgewieselt on 1/23/25, 9:42 PM

    Watch this https://briefs.video/videos/is-html-a-programming-language/ - every decade we discuss this. but if you are a programmer and HTML is not a programming language than you must produce a ton of garbage HTML with JS. Okay. :)

  • by bowsamic on 1/10/25, 4:00 PM

    The article seems to simply assume that only programming languages have value, then argue that since HTML has value, that it is a programming language.

    EDIT: It's a very common logical confusion. Just because someone says "HTML is bad because it's not a programming language" but you think HTML is good doesn't mean that HTML is a programming language. The first person could just be wrong about there being a connection between badness and not being a programming language. It's a shame the entire article is written based on this error

  • by sxp on 1/10/25, 4:12 PM

    > Because HTML ... lacks features like ... Turing-completeness, it’s often dismissed as not a programming language.

    This is the core reason why HTML isn't considered a programming language. It's not designed to be Turing-complete which is a key aspect of programming languages.

    That being said, HTML+CSS is unintentionally Turing-complete: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-co...

  • by tomohelix on 1/10/25, 4:58 PM

    I will get flak for this but just too funny to not say it.

    This looks to me the equivalent of: "software engineer is a real engineering discipline" argument. Some practitioners of one field consider themselves to be equivalent to another related field because of similarities. Opponents cite some "key differences" and requirements to deny the claim. Fights ensue.

  • by threatofrain on 1/10/25, 4:39 PM

    This is just a HN personality test in disguise.

  • by 65 on 1/10/25, 3:59 PM

  • by recursivedoubts on 1/10/25, 4:01 PM

  • by 65 on 1/10/25, 4:11 PM

    > HTML is somehow simultaneously paper and the printing press for the electronic age. It’s both how we write and what we read. It’s the most democratic computer language and the most global. It’s the medium we use to connect with each other and publish to the world. It makes perfect sense that it was developed to serve as a library—an archive, a directory, a set of connections—for all digital knowledge.

    Ah yes, journalist word salad.

    No, HTML is not a programming language. We all know this. The definition of programming is: "creating a sequence of instructions to enable the computer to do something" - which HTML does not do. Defining HTML as a programming language is like defining a plain .txt file as a programming language. You can open it in your browser, the computer is "running" it, but it's not doing anything. The underlying rendering engine of HTML is what's doing the work rendering your markup.

    I suspect this is the author trying to quell his cognitive dissonance at not knowing how to write code for actual programming languages. Perhaps it's his ego invoking that fear... "I don't know something I want to know, so I must rationalize something I do know as being more than it is."

    I suppose it's a good article for engagement - for journalist types to send to each other to feel better about their lack of knowing how to write code, and for developers to chuckle.

  • by empressplay on 1/10/25, 4:01 PM

    > Because HTML looks easy and lacks features like formal conditional logic and Turing-completeness, it’s often dismissed as not a programming language.

    Uh, yes? It's _not_ a programming language, it's a markup language. It's kind of in the name.

  • by breakingrules3 on 1/10/25, 4:07 PM

    what a completely useless article of drivel

  • by quux on 1/10/25, 4:10 PM

    This is a dumb article, part way through they admit that HTML isn't capable of doing anything a "programming language" does by definition, and that it's really just the most impactful markup language of all time.

    Yes thank you for using 1200 words to state the obvious.