HTML is great. It defines the structure of web pages and determines how data is displayed online. What you’re looking at right now is HTML code, read and interpreted by your browser. But this doesn’t make HTML a programming language.
If HTML was the first language you have learned like me, then I am pretty sure that it must have been a little disappointing for you after realizing that HTML is not a programming language and is a markup language instead. This means that you cannot call yourself a programmer just by knowing HTML.
However, we hear this a lot but when we actually reach out to people to ask them what's the reason for HTML not being a programming language, most of the time probably will not have any answer.
A Markup Language
HTML is a type of markup language. It encapsulates, or “marks up” data within HTML tags, which define the data and describe its purpose on the webpage. The web browser then reads the HTML, which tells it things like which parts are headings, which parts are paragraphs, which parts are links, etc. The HTML describes the data to the browser, and the browser then displays the data accordingly.
That’s how the browser knows that
Here are the top 7 reasons why Developers call HTML a non-programming language:
- No Logic in HTML
One of the main reasons is that, unlike other programming languages, HTML is incapable of logic building. That means it's very limited to just a bunch of tags. And you cannot do all sorts of cool things you do with your other programming languages.
- HTML can't make choices
HTML doesn't support conditional statements like if and else, which is one of the core features of probably all the programming languages I've ever known. It fails to compare values and make useful decisions out of them.
- HTML can't reuse the code
HTML again fails to provide the facility for reusability of the code. Well, there are ways to apply CSS properties to multiple elements but as you see, it's CSS doing all the job not HTML so yeah not a programming language.
CSS is not a programming language either.
- No Maths in HTML
HTML cannot do any maths which is not a bad thing in my opinion because then you don't have to worry about losing your mind behind those nasty operators. However, this can be seen as a disadvantage as being able to do a bit of maths is essential for a programming language. HTML is a slowly evolving language so who knows we may get some ability to do maths within HTML in near future. But for now, HTML is only as good as I am when it comes to maths.
- No Data modifying!
Without maths and external support from Javascript, HTML by itself cannot do any data manipulation. Even if it could there's no good way of displaying it. This is something we will take about next. However, for now, HTML is pretty much incapable of accessing and modifying the system memory content of the machine.
- HTML can't Take Input and Output
Since HTML doesn't care about modifying our data, it is incapable of storing it either. It cannot accept any input except for the "<input>" tag but that doesn't matter as the data isn't stored anywhere. Same when it comes to giving output. Yeah I know it can display text on the screen but that's not the output we are talking about. The output should be something generated step by step by the language itself & its values should differ as per the input value. Which we know it's not the deal with HTML.
- HTML doesn't give any errors
This is probably something almost everyone hates & loves about HTML. Hates because it's so difficult to find the mistakes you have done in your hundreds of lines of long code and loves because even if there's some mistake in a certain element, rest all the elements will be displayed on screen anyways. Now it's up to you to decide if you like this or not. However, giving reasonable errors is a good property of programming languages which we wish HTML also had.
So there Are the top reasons HTML is not a programming language.
Still, HTML Is Awesome
Unfortunately, coding only in HTML doesn’t make you a programmer. In fact, HTML really shines when you use it in conjunction with an actual programming language, such as when using a web framework. That’s when you can start serving up dynamically created web pages and database applications.
But don’t worry, even with pure HTML, you’re still a coder. You’re writing lines of code in a (markup, not programming) language. You’re essentially codifying information for the web. So while you might not want to put HTML on the “Programming Languages” part of your resume, you should definitely have it under “Skills”, or simply “Languages”.
Knowledge of web page structure is a valuable asset for anyone to have, in IT as well as in other fields, and I’m definitely not trying to discredit anyone’s knowledge on the awesomeness that is HTML. HTML is a core tenet of front-end web development and is obviously a major aspect of what the user winds up seeing on their computer screen. With the emergence of HTML5, HTML’s capabilities and opportunities to define and structure web page data have soared to new heights, with a greater emphasis on multimedia, mobile web, geolocation, and more. This makes a solid understanding of HTML even more useful to have.
So keep rocking the HTML, get to know it well, and by all means, code away! Just don’t call it programming.
There is no expert who can remain an expert without sharing their knowledge. So, keep sharing your knowledge with everyone.