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new years resolutions

Simon Bunker simon at rendermania.com
Sat Jan 4 15:58:03 EST 2003 
Might a better definition be that a programming language program that can
take data input and act on it to produce a particular output?

HTML does have a lot of variables defined, but HTML itself cannot do
anything with these without Javascript/PHP/Perl/Python/C/some programming
language. The borwser has been created by a programming language and takes
the HTML as data.

Then again python source code is data too until you take it through the
interpretter. Running a python module is running a program, viewing a
webpage isn't.

Simon
--
http://www.rendermania.com/

"Cliff Wells" <clifford.wells at attbi.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1041708488.14181.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 08:46, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> > > From: andy [mailto:andy at eastonwest.co.uk]
> > [...]
> > > On a purely personal level, I *feel* that programming, to me,
> > > is solving a problem by the use of a computer-programming
> > > language.  To me, HTML coding doesn't *feel* like that, but
> > > maybe that's because I'm not very *good* at it...  I think
> > > its because of the lack of control structures (I am trying to
> > > self-analyse to figure out what I mean)... having said that,
> > > I suppose tables, for instance resemble control structures...
> > [...]
> >
> > I told myself I wasn't going to keep this thread alive anymore, but then
> > who said I was either principled or consistent <wink>.
>
> Probably many people who responded to this thread told themselves the
> same thing, so you're at least consistent with them (myself included)
> <wink>
>
> > I think the above is the crux of the problem however. Ask yourself (i)
> > would I write HTML pages differently if I considered it programming?,
> > (ii) would I write Python programs differently if I considered writing
> > HTML programming?, (iii) would I view people writing HTML differently if
> > they were allowed to call it programming?, and finally, (iv) do I think
> > other people would view me differently if writing HTML was also
> > considered programming?
> >
> > My personal answers are no, no, no, and I don't care. Wheter writing
> > HTML is programming makes no difference to anything I'm doing, nor do I
> > expect, does it to any of our web designers. It's a fact of life that I
> > couldn't do their work, and they couldn't do mine -- and I don't have
> > enough hubris to suggest that my work is either harder, more important,
> > or more meaningful (I'm having a hard time seeing another reason for
> > making a distinction... i.e. tell my _why_ you want do make a
> > distinction and the "how" should be much easier). Besides, even I end up
> > writing a lot of HTML (aka documentation) -- should I change my title to
> > "Software Architect/HTML writer" <wink>? (As an experiment, try telling
> > your boss you don't want to write documentation, in HTML, since you're a
> > _programmer_ <grin>).
> >
> > Finally, it seems rather silly to try to define set membership (is HTML
> > in the set of programming languages?) as a all or nothing (function
> > returning either 0 or 1) when (a) you don't have a concrete definition,
> > (b) it seems to rely on a combination of factors in varying degrees, and
> > (c) a good number of the people interested all but define it as the
> > intent _they're_ having when _they're_ writing HTML ("HTML is something
> > I use for documentation, for my _real_ work I use X".) For a much better
> > (or at least more interesting) approach google for "Russel's paradox"
> > and "fuzzy logic".
>
> I think the thing that gave this thread its energy was because it was
> started by someone flaming a newbie over a fairly trivial and offhand
> remark.  That tends to get people's hackles up and the lines get drawn
> fairly quickly.  Once people have announced their positions they are
> reluctant to withdraw from that position and yet are too polite (thank
> you) to invoke the Hitler clause bringing the thread to its logical
> conclusion and yet can't quite stop arguing.
>
>
> > ok-I'll-shut-up-now'ly y'rs
>
> *Sure* you will <wink>:  self.consistency -= 1
>
>
> Arguments-are-the-crack-pipe-of-usenet'ly yrs,
>
> --
> Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at attbi.com>
>
>
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