What is a programming language?

[Peter Hansen]

Sam Hughes wrote:
> 
> "Nico Schuyt" <nschuyt at hotmail.com> wrote in
> news:3e0f0bce$0$30032$1b62eedf at news.euronet.nl:
> 
> > Sam Hughes wrote:
> >> Making Web sites is _not_ programming.  Programming happens when you
> >> give a list of instructions that are to be executed.  
> >
> > Disagree with that. A HTML page is a set of command lines. When sent
> > to the interpreter, the browser, the result is shown on the screen.
> 
> You could also consider an ASCII text file to be a "set of command lines."
> Every character in that text file is a command that says "display me after
> the previous character," or "start a new line" or "indent to the next tab
> stop."
> 
> Thus, by your logic, an ASCII text file is written in a programming
> language.

This discussion is making me chuckle.  *Of course* even ASCII can 
be considered a programming language!  I would think that anyone who
insisted otherwise might not have much experience with computers.

Anyway, since this was cross-posted to comp.lang.python, please try
to treat newbies nicely.  I don't know what the standard is in alt.html,
but it would seem more helpful to simply answer the question that
a self-professed newbie asks, rather than to berate him about an issue
that is both open to interpretation, and *not even what he said in the
first place*!

-Peter