HTML isn't a series of commands executable by anything

Well, it's a muddy issue but the long and short of it is that you're the one that's going to end up dirty if you take that stance. Given what we do, we tend to have very specific ideas of what words like "executable" should mean. Broader definitions exist, though, than the technical ones we are most comfortable with. For instance, you can think of an <h1> tag as a "command" to a "browsing device" to start rendering text as a level one header. The end tag, </h1> can similarly be thought of as a command to stop rendering text as a level one header. And so forth.

Our predisposition to think of things like "commands" as being part of "programming languages" and to think of "programming languages" as usually being Turing complete is, it turns out, more a matter of jargon than anything. Try debating with an intelligent but non-technical person about whether HTML is a programming language or not. It's not an easy debate to win.

Dennis Ritchie didn't have anything to do with this patent, by the way.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

In reply to Re^2: Looking for old Perl CGI code by sauoq
in thread Looking for old Perl CGI code by ton

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