new years resolutions

[Cliff Wells]

On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 08:46, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> > From: andy [mailto:andy at eastonwest.co.uk] 
> [...]
> > On a purely personal level, I *feel* that programming, to me, 
> > is solving a problem by the use of a computer-programming 
> > language.  To me, HTML coding doesn't *feel* like that, but 
> > maybe that's because I'm not very *good* at it...  I think 
> > its because of the lack of control structures (I am trying to 
> > self-analyse to figure out what I mean)... having said that, 
> > I suppose tables, for instance resemble control structures...
> [...]
> 
> I told myself I wasn't going to keep this thread alive anymore, but then
> who said I was either principled or consistent <wink>.

Probably many people who responded to this thread told themselves the
same thing, so you're at least consistent with them (myself included)
<wink>

> I think the above is the crux of the problem however. Ask yourself (i)
> would I write HTML pages differently if I considered it programming?,
> (ii) would I write Python programs differently if I considered writing
> HTML programming?, (iii) would I view people writing HTML differently if
> they were allowed to call it programming?, and finally, (iv) do I think
> other people would view me differently if writing HTML was also
> considered programming?
> 
> My personal answers are no, no, no, and I don't care. Wheter writing
> HTML is programming makes no difference to anything I'm doing, nor do I
> expect, does it to any of our web designers. It's a fact of life that I
> couldn't do their work, and they couldn't do mine -- and I don't have
> enough hubris to suggest that my work is either harder, more important,
> or more meaningful (I'm having a hard time seeing another reason for
> making a distinction... i.e. tell my _why_ you want do make a
> distinction and the "how" should be much easier). Besides, even I end up
> writing a lot of HTML (aka documentation) -- should I change my title to
> "Software Architect/HTML writer" <wink>? (As an experiment, try telling
> your boss you don't want to write documentation, in HTML, since you're a
> _programmer_ <grin>).
> 
> Finally, it seems rather silly to try to define set membership (is HTML
> in the set of programming languages?) as a all or nothing (function
> returning either 0 or 1) when (a) you don't have a concrete definition,
> (b) it seems to rely on a combination of factors in varying degrees, and
> (c) a good number of the people interested all but define it as the
> intent _they're_ having when _they're_ writing HTML ("HTML is something
> I use for documentation, for my _real_ work I use X".) For a much better
> (or at least more interesting) approach google for "Russel's paradox"
> and "fuzzy logic".

I think the thing that gave this thread its energy was because it was
started by someone flaming a newbie over a fairly trivial and offhand
remark.  That tends to get people's hackles up and the lines get drawn
fairly quickly.  Once people have announced their positions they are
reluctant to withdraw from that position and yet are too polite (thank
you) to invoke the Hitler clause bringing the thread to its logical
conclusion and yet can't quite stop arguing.


> ok-I'll-shut-up-now'ly y'rs

*Sure* you will <wink>:  self.consistency -= 1


Arguments-are-the-crack-pipe-of-usenet'ly yrs,

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at attbi.com>