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Comments on: Not Real Programming

Writing HTML can’t be programming. HTML is not a programming language. It’s a markup lanuage. If you use a programming lanuage to you are programming. If you use a markup lanuage you are marking up. If you are programming you are a programmer. If you are marking up you are a marker upper:)

Actually, a computer program is a list of distinct instructions, arranged in very precise, logical order to cause the computer to perform a specific task. A single command is not a program, and simply using MS Word to type a letter is not writing a program. When you write HTML you are not telling the computer how to do something. You are simply telling the computer how you want the page to look, using a list of distinct, individual commands. Each single command performs an end task, like making a paragraph purple. There is certainly a program running in the background to make that happen, but you aren’t programming. If you write a program that displays data on a computer screen there must be some code within the program that defines the way the data is displayed on the screen. That part of the code is NOT programming. It is page layout, just like HTML.

To simplify: if I type into a computer something like “Show me a list of all my employees along with their sales figures and the cost of sales for each sorted by region.”, I’m not writing a program. But if I write the step-by-step instructions that tell the computer exactly how to accomplish that task, then I’m programming. So, when you can write the HTML code that will accomplish a compex task like this example, you will be programming in HTML.

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