new years resolutions

[andy]

Sorry for the duplication - I'm kinda new at this mailing list, and fired the 
response off to Peter, rather than the mailing list.  Doh!

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Peter,

I agree with what you said - I wasn't actually taking a particular stance,
just throwing my bit in.  To be quite honest, I am rather undecided!

As for TeX, well, I just know of it's existence, and I couldn't identify a
line of it if I saw one.  Probably a bad example, but that's why I said was
would you *compare* TeX and HTML?  I definately wasn't pontificating on the
completeness or otherwise of TeX.

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've had much more difficulties getting HTML to do what I want than getting a
more "traditional" language to, however.  That's probably why it feels that
way for me.  I have friends who *are* good at HTML, and I suppose they feel
that it *is* for the same reasons.

Control structures are not it, either, as early stored-program computers,
 such as ENIAC and Colossus didn't have much (if any) in the way of control
 structures - they were mainly top-down.

Furthermore, when I did a short stint with Toshiba, in one of their TV
factories (in my youth) I had to use a component auto-insertion machine which
we had to 'program' with paper tapes.  The programs were positioning
information and little more than that!  Hmmm.  A guy used to use a special
machine to produce the tapes by positioning the insertion head at each
component position and then hitting buttons.  A few extra bytes would be
added to the tape each time.  Considering the force of the machines involved,
a 'bug' in the program would cause a quite literal 'crash' - complete with
flying circuit fragments!

Here's another one: Printer control languages, i.e. Epson ESC codes, HP PCL,
HP HPGL.  BTW PostScript aka Forth is DEFINATELY excluded from this (It *IS*
Turing-Complete). How would you classify them?  They all operate in roughly
the same way as HTML: They have codes (tags) identified by a symbol (often
ESC/chr 27), some of them are paired and some can be nested within others.
Most don't have a /structure/ per se, i.e. you can put things in any order
that suits you.  How do these differ, if at all, from HTML and, indeed
Python?

On an even more esoteric level, what about the art of the Magician? Ok, no
formal written language (that I know of anyway!), but there seems to be a
prescribed set of 'moves', 'primitives', if you will, and once a sequence is
performed correctly, the desired effect (the illusion) is achieved.  There is
definate structure, and a degree of formality to it.  There are just no
computers involved - yet! Could a formal "programming" language be defined to
describe this art?

I still maintain that it is a matter of perspective: If someone *feels* a
 task is programming, it probably is.  I'm not even sure if it has to involve
 computers...  Maybe its more about simply getting a machine to do what you
 want?

Could get really silly here: driving, cooking (with a microwave at least) and
so on!

regards,

-andyj

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