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Speaking as a Fancy Computer Science Professor at a Fancy Institution of Higher Education who teaches the course on Programming Languages:
I endorse @vkc’s position here 100%.
HTML is programming.
@vkc (To be clear, the position I endorse is both “HTML is programming” •and• the heckler blocking.)
Beyond the reasons of “don't heckle, don't be an asshole” and “this boundary-drawing is elitist” — reasons which, to be clear, are •entirely sufficient• to justify the OP on their own — I am willing to defend the assertions that writing HTML is programming and that HTML is a programming language on the merits:
1/?
HTML is a way for humans to express their ideas and their intentions in a form that is unambiguously interpreted by a machine. We express our ideas, then turn them loose. The machine's interpretation may diverge from our human understanding; when it does, our ideas talk back to us and they •surprise• us.
If that’s not programming, I don’t know what is.
2/
@inthehands 100%! LaTeX is programming, HTML is programming, Markdown is programming, teaching your dog to do tricks is programming. Not all programming is writing kernel drivers
@grwster
I mean, making the mistake of taking your cute remark seriously: the dog isn’t unless it’s a robot dog; that's teaching! One of the things that makes programming programming is the machine and its unambiguous interpretation. Teaching, however…that’s a whole other kettle of fish of a different color!
@inthehands fair enough, though teaching a dog a trick is about capturing behaviors and putting them on command, and then chaining those commands, which is more like programming than teaching in my book
@grwster
I mean, maybe could one say that this kind of training — dogs, horses, soldiers, orchestral musicians, surgical assistants*, anything where you’re trying to teach a living creature to follow instructions with near-mechanical consistency — is teaching the student to be a machine, so that they can be “programmed” for the day’s task?
* (no disrespect to any of these roles / jobs, all demanding!)
@inthehands orchestral scores / sheet music / guitar tabs, definitely programming… I’m a flawed machine when running those programs, but that’s not the programmer / composer’s fault ;-)
@grwster
We're wandering now, but heck with it:
I have a whole soapbox about how we sometimes misinterpret musical scores as being programming when they’re not. There’s a whole spectrum of •how a score carries meaning• that depends on the types and degree of interpretive liberty the score affords within its musical-cultural context. Some scores are basically MIDI by other means; some are only the loosest framework for improvisation.
@grwster The classical world I come from has IMO erred since the mid 20th century much to far toward seeing scores toward the “MIDI by other means” end of the spectrum, particularly with pre-20C music. I’m pretty sure that if we could hear a recording of, say, Chopin or Bach playing their own music, a modern classical musician’s immediate reaction would be “No! That's wrong!!”
@inthehands I know some contemporary classical (new music) composers and am now looking forward to asking them how they feel about this