Notes on `lang` by Taylor Hunt on CodePen

HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me | WIRED

When haters deny HTML’s status as a programming language, they’re showing they don’t understand what a language really is. Language is not instructing an interlocutor what to do in a way that leaves no room for other interpretations; it is better and richer than that. Like human language, HTML is conversational. It is remarkably adept at adapting to context. It can take a different shape on any machine, from a desktop browser or an e-reader screen to a mobile app or a screen reader for the blind (so long as that device is built to present hypertext).

Hell, yeah!

Ultimately, even as HTML has become the province of professionals, it cannot be gatekept. This is what makes so many programmers so anxious about the web, and sometimes pathetically desperate to maintain the all-too-real walls they’ve erected between software engineers and web developers.

Hell, yeeeeaaaaahhh!!!

What other programmers might say dismissively is something HTML lovers embrace: Anyone can do it. Whether we’re using complex frameworks or very simple tools, HTML’s promise is that we can build, make, code, and do anything we want.

CSS Timeline

Here’s a remarkably in-depth timeline of the web’s finest programming language, from before it existed to today’s thriving ecosystem. And the timeline is repsonsive too—lovely!

Balisage: Metaphors We Code By

My talk, Building, was about the metaphors we use to talk about the work we do on the web. So I’m interested in this analysis of the metaphors used to talk about markup:

• Data is documents, processing data is clerking
• Data is trees, processing data is forestry
• Data is buildings, processing data is construction
• Data is a place, processing data is a journey
• Data is a fluid, processing data is plumbing
• Data is a textile, processing data is weaving
• Data is music, processing data is performing

Is HTML A Programming Language? (Webbed Briefs)

I’m glad that Heydon has answered this question once and for all.

I’m sure that’ll be the end of it now.

Front-of-the-front-end and back-of-the-front-end web development | Brad Frost

These definitions work for me:

A front-of-the-front-end developer is a web developer who specializes in writing HTML, CSS, and presentational JavaScript code.

A back-of-the-front-end developer is a web developer who specializes in writing JavaScript code necessary to make a web application function properly.