Comments on: What A Web Developer Is-And Isn’t

By: Matt Hill

Matt Hill — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 02:08:56 +0000

Yes, of course we are arguing semantics, but that’s the point — using the right words in the correct way is important, it’s what language comprehension is all about. We have nuance in our normal every day language for obvious reasons; the same is true of the meaning of words used in more specialised fields. It’s very simple: If you use the wrong words in the wrong instance, people will misunderstand you.

Markup languages were around a long time before HTML, and were called that *specifically* because of what they do. They “mark up” the structure of data or content. They usually do not contain anything that allows the altering of that data, which by your own definition is what code does. If you spend any time on the W3C site, you will see that they *never* describe HTML as code, it is always called “markup”. Code on the other hand has traditionally been used to mean program code, ie, anything written in a programming language that performs processing on some data and creates some kind of output of that processed data.

If markup was code, we wouldn’t have needed the word “markup”.

Now of course I know that there are loads of web workers who use “HTML” and “code” interchangably. That doesn’t mean it’s right though.

I’m not calling you out for the sake of it, or to be mean or anything like that. I just think that it’s unsurprising there’s so much confusion around what we do when a highly respected developer such as yourself is using industry terminology in a misleading way.

The simple view I have is that if one writes HTML and CSS and nothing else, then one is writing markup. If you throw PHP and JS into the mix, it’s fair enough to call it coding. But HTML *itself* is not code.

By: Amber Weinberg

Amber Weinberg — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:21:15 +0000

@Matt And where do you get your definition of code? Markup is a subsection of code. The definition of code is a language that alters something on a device. You’re arguing semantics, but the simple point is to pick up any HTML book written by any expert and they’ll plainly refer to HTML as both code and markup.

Similar things to PHP and Obj C – semantics, structuring and both require a knowledge of how everything works. I began learning Obj C with only a previous knowledge of CSS, HTML and WordPress-based PHP and it caught on quickly. Had I not know HTML, I would’ve been pretty lost in the actual meaning and workings on Obj C.

By: Matt Hill

Matt Hill — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:17:10 +0000

I’m not fighting at all, I just don’t really understand how you can claim HTML/CSS is code.

Code has logic structures that DO something. Code normally processes inputs and data and then outputs the result of those processes.

Markup describes structure and content, it does not contain any form of logic processing, and it does not output the results of any processing. Markup simply describes a structure of content and data.

I’m just not understanding how you rationalise that code and HTML are “similar in many more ways that one” when they are designed for completely different purposes. Can you provide examples of this similarity to help me understand what you mean?

By: Amber Weinberg

Amber Weinberg — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:09:19 +0000

There are plenty of people who code without PHP, just like there are plenty of people who work in the web and can’t code proper HTML (cough cough PHP developers). Many sites you might think are in PHP, probably aren’t. For example, dribbble is written in RoR.

By: Amber Weinberg

Amber Weinberg — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:08:16 +0000

Matt, I write PHP and Objective C, which are most certainly “code”, and HTML is similar in many more ways that one. Call it what you want, the proper thing I do is development, not design. I never design or even touch a PSD (except to grab images). I only code.

You can fight about it all you want, but HTML is a proper coding language. It’s only the “IT” people who fight that definition. All of my clients are web agencies, freelancers and other developers, and they’ve never said different.

By: Matt Hill

Matt Hill — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:03:44 +0000

I’d have to agree here. HTML is not code, it’s a markup language. You use markup to describe the structure of a page, not its logic. Code is used for creating logical programs that at a minimum take an input, do something with it, and make an output. HTML doesn’t do that and it’s disingenuous to programmers (“developers”, same thing as far as I’m concerned) to claim that HTML is in anyway similar to code. It really isn’t.

Maybe this is why you’re getting all sorts of strange enquiries that don’t match your skillset, Amber?