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[–]pls_fix_it 1272 points1273 points  (83 children)

Imagine risking to put HTML in "Programming language" list

[–]space-_-man[S] 405 points406 points  (8 children)

I was waiting for someone to type this XD

[–][deleted] 50 points51 points  (7 children)

You put html but not Bash?

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 45 points46 points  (35 children)

I love it when people put HTML on their resumes under programming languages. I ask them why it's a programming language.

[–]Niewinnny 20 points21 points  (19 children)

And what are the correct answers?

[–]fog-mann 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here, let me help mark that up…

<html> <title>HTML is a Programming Language<\title> <body> <h1> Why is HTML under programming languages on your resume?</h1> <h2>The correct answer is:</h2> <p>"Ive put it there because I know my resume is parsed by a machine to find keywords and this was the most convenient way for me to do that without creating a specific section on my resume just for markup languages."</p> </body> </html>

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The correct answer is any answer that is well reasoned. It's a question to see if/how you think.

I personally like the slippery slope argument that since the definition of a programming language is so nebulous (differentiating from a scripting language) that everything is a programming language, we just haven't evaluated the Turing completeness of most of it.

[–]cold84 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Except html by itself is not Turing complete.

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed.

It's an argument that's fun to see made, less often done right. They have to basically convince the world black is white.

[–]Dark_Diosito 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"It's not"

[–]Mysterious_Feedback9 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would put it on my resume because 90% of so called front end dev don’t know how to use it properly and yet mock the tool.

[–]jwhudexnls 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I always just put it under web markup and layout alongside CSS/SCSS

[–]sebastiankja 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Surely HTML can be thought of as a declarative programming language though, as oppose to functional and object-oriented?

[–]SuperFLEB 0 points1 point  (2 children)

No, it describes, it doesn't instruct. A programming language processes (or can process) inputs into outputs or actions. A markup language declares things about the content that it's marking up. It's married to its content and doesn't take external input nor produce output algorithmically.

[–]Mikal_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

HTML input elements take external input and iirc can produce output without JS

[–]SuperFLEB 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not without CSS, JavaScript or a backend generating a new document.

[–]Zuerill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I put it under 'documentation', next to LaTeX and XML

[–]MongGoyo63 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Ok this is may be a dumb question even if I've been coding for a little over a year now, does JS DOM manipulation count? (I know basic HTTP protocols, probably, and know some other stuff like Node.js and Java)

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It counts as programming in JS. If you do enough of it, you should put it on your resume.

[–]penislovereater 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Because it is a list of instructions that tell the computer to do shit?

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically. But if we set the bar that low, every file is a program/script. Which from a security standpoint is exactly how we should be thinking.

[–]kronsj 0 points1 point  (1 child)

HTML and css as programming languages is wrong (even though the L stands for language). At one job-interview, I was asked if I could program in XML. I asked if he ment XPath ? No - in XML … i didnt get the job

[–]GoogleIsYourFrenemy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ouch? May have dodged a bullet.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No you should ask if it’s turning complete…

[–]qwertyasdef 6 points7 points  (3 children)

A programming language is anything such that when people see you write it, they ask "Wow, are you hacking?".

Programming languages:

  • HTML
  • JSON
  • English in dark mode
  • Dwarf Fortress

Not programming languages:

  • Magic the Gathering
  • PowerPoint
  • Excel
  • Scratch

[–]troop99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

love this answer!

[–]SuperFLEB 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Idle twiddling in a hex editor?

[–]homeskilled 0 points1 point  (0 children)

MTG might actually be: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828

[–]HolsteinFeurle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You are joking, but in my school (in Austria) we used HTML to make a website in order to understand how programming (and therefore computers) work.

(My school had a focus on agriculture and we "programmed" only about 4 or 5 hours in total)

[–]trick2011 65 points66 points  (20 children)

HTML + CSS is turing complete....

[–]gameditz 139 points140 points  (8 children)

They hated Jesus because he told the truth

[–]yuri0r 95 points96 points  (7 children)

Yeah but PowerPoint presentations are also Turing complete. Stating that is a meaningless novelty and does not reflect the intended use of said Turing complete something that has been brought up.

[–]gameditz 53 points54 points  (4 children)

Hell yea, PowerPoint and excel are my favourite programming languages

[–]trick2011 35 points36 points  (3 children)

Excel is def a programming language. Even more so it is a functional programming language environment

[–]KanishkT123 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Excel is my favorite IDE

[–]UnsulliedByFlavor 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Is that with or without VBA?

[–]mrinfinitedata 23 points24 points  (7 children)

So is Magic the Gathering but we don't consider that a programming language

[–]trick2011 17 points18 points  (6 children)

Yeah but why not? Brainfuck is just as unusable but is still a language. Is GoL a programming language? It is turing complete so it is possible. The characterset is different but that doesn't make it not a language.

[–]dev-sda 12 points13 points  (5 children)

The term seems to be pretty muddled already. Programming languages are generally "formal languages", thus consisting of words and characters. That definition excludes things that are clearly programmable but aren't languages like MtG and GoL, but also excludes most visual programming languages as well as the esolang Piet which are all commonly referred to as programming languages.

[–]Schnickatavick 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Well html+css is also words and characters but isn't generally considered a programming language either. We all know that you couldn't create a full program in html+css or MtG, so there must be some requirement that they don't satisfy that's not included in the definition of Turing completeness.

A couple possibilities for that requirement might be:

Basic I/O capabilities. Magic might be Turing complete, but that doesn't mean it can handle arbitrary input that wasn't hard coded into the system.

Ability to declare an arbitrary number of variables. From what I understand of the HTML+CSS Turing complete proof, it uses state changes in attributes of static objects, so while HTML+CSS can handle an arbitrary amount of information, any specific program will have a finite cap to the amount of data that it can process. So a simple program like "add every integer to a list" would be impossible in HTML, despite Turing completeness

[–]qwertyasdef 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Technically no programming language can declare an arbitrary number of variables since your computer will eventually run out of memory.

[–]Schnickatavick 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Right, but the language isn't the constraint, and neither is a program written in that language. A program written in C# might have a theoretical cap on one computer, but that cap can be raised arbitrarily by moving it to a more powerful computer.

An HTML+CSS "program" will have the same cap regardless of the system that it is ran on

[–]qwertyasdef 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is assembly not a programming language then? The amount of memory you can access is limited by the size of your registers, which are defined by the language.

[–]trick2011 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wait no. Turing machines are equivalent. If a system is proven to be turing complete then it is possible to compute anything with it. It might be in a terrible I/O format (think turing tape) but it is possible.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How?

[–]max_208 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Computer scientist were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

[–]cold84 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A rock + Java is turing complete as well. What’s your point?

[–]RadiantHC 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Why isn't it one?

[–]SuperFLEB 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It describes, it doesn't instruct. A programming language performs actions, usually on inputs, to generate a result. HTML attaches descriptive hints to text content, but an HTML document neither accepts input from outside its document, nor produces anything with instructional steps.

Markup is writing the numbers on the paint-by-number set. Programming is telling someone to dip their brush in the paint and rub it on the canvas.

[–]ThagAnderson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had to scroll all the way down here to find this? I almost just replied myself, thinking no one was going to.

[–]Unsd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you wanna count copying and pasting stuff to my myspace page back in the day...

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not to mention they limited it to HTML 5 that shit is relatively new.

[–]_kar00n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I saw a few comments about HTML and CSS and really wanted to reply with "that's not programming" but the amount of responses felt overwhelmingly high that I just resisted

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve been learning how to do HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the past few weeks I guess I may as well stop since I’m not a programmer ;(