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Why is it that CS students with no industry experience lament about HTML all the time?

I don't get the weird obsession with talking about how it's "not a programming language"
No one who knows what they're talking about is claiming it is.

Hyper Text *Markup* Language.

Markup is in the name.

Comments
  • 4
    Probably because, fresh out of school with little or no experience, the see “webdevs” with no formal education making lots of money hacking together simple html sites snd need to defend the time spent learning.

    Once they have been out there a while they learn that its rarely just html, and no formal education does not mean not having spent a loong time learning ;)
  • 4
    Because they're bikeshedding https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/...

    Find groups where they don't waste time with trivialities and stay with them. I don't mean that it has to be only business and all work no fun, but that the members of said group stay away from worrying about trivial stuff in general.

    It's everywhere and it's very, very annoying. It's not like I'm blameless either, I've done my share of bikeshedding, but it's good to watch out for it.

    I also think people spend way too much time spending energy on hating things (again, ngl I've done it too).
  • 0
    This has happened to me so many times. I try to make mock-websites using HTML and CSS. Many people can not digest that I can make a good simple website using just HTML while they try to use Django, etc. Good for you if the website turns out great using django but please stop irritating me and saying that HTML is not a language
  • 3
    @Eash535 html is a language, just not a programming one, but a markup one
  • 0
    What!?

    I put my code in a file, and I get an output. It is programming the machine to give an output. See I programmed it.

    Honestly though, who uses html without javascript? And you don't use javascript in the browser without html. So all these techs are a subset of a complex programming environment. Maybe this should be considered a browser programming language with diverse parts. Also, xslt transformations are supported in browsers as well. It is considered turing complete. So its another language embedded in the browser. You could have a webpage that uses that along with html and program your output through the xslt.

    But the best part of this, is watching people scream when you say HTML is a programming language and cite references.

    I am going to start telling people I code in Browser Script programming language. It can be a blanket language to cover the cluster fuck we have in browsers today.
  • 1
    People who haven't done front-end think it doesn't need any programming.
    People who have done front-end think it involves too much programming.
    And everyone else [read: managers] don't get what all the fuss is about...
  • 0
    Also, people ARE calling it a programming language:

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions...

    Lol, the guy defending HTML as a programming language disregards turing complete xml transformations. Which has more programming capability than html. Let the battle continue!

    Edit:

    Notice the part where he says HR will reject resume if HTML is not listed as programming language. So for resume purposes it might be safer to say it is one, lest you be omitted by the dragon at the door. lol
  • 2
    @Demolishun to be fair, a programming language does not even have to be Turing complete.
  • 2
    Doesn't matter what "people" call it... WE are the experts here, and we know there are 3 general types of syntax:
    - programming language
    - markup
    - data notation

    Problem is, front-end is never just about HTML
  • 1
    For me it was the other way around.
    When I was a student without industry experience, I thought that HTML was awesome. Later when it was part of my job working with HTML, I started hating it.
    Because it is antiquated. It has legacy shit, is therefore often inconsistent. It is too verbose. And it is being abused for crap that it absolutely hasn’t been designed for.

    My latest facepalm discovery about html is:

    On mobile, you can not have a textfield for email recipients AND have an appropriate on-screen keyboard for that. Why? Because if you want email keyboard, you need to set input type to email. But that prevents you from having multiple emails in one field. So you are left with a standard text textfield which will make all sorts of autocorrect bullshit with your email.

    To this day, there is no way to improve this on mobile using HTML. You can try it out with any email website like gmail for example.
  • 0
    HTML is being used to build platform independent UIs but is absolutely not suited for that task. And that is why I mostly hate it.

    Which is a pity because I love using HTML for that thing that it actually was designed for: static documents.
    I love to use HTML instead of PDFs.
  • 1
    html is just a skeleton, it doesn't process anything, so it's not a programming language. cs get upset because people call themselves "programmers" for doing a basic website on notepad in 8th grade. cs don't actually hate html, they just hate those people
  • 0
    Also, HTML was a markup language *originally*. Now it plays a double role and is also used for layout. That’s where it gets ugly.
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