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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/
We might draw a line about Turing completeness or intended purpose. Both completely miss the point.
It is fun to try to find Turing tarpits in HTML and/or CSS! But that’s not what makes programming programming.
The previous post is it. The problems of programming — the things that make it difficult, the things that make it rewarding — all come from that collision of human intent with unambiguous machine interpretation. That’s the game right there.
/end
@inthehands people like to think programming is while loops and if conditionals. I like to remind people of their programmable TV remotes.
"But that's not real programming" my brother you co-opted the word.