A programming language is...

....anything that has a loop.  Since HTML doesn't have a loop anywhere, it i
s
not a programming language.  Simple as that.

PHP, Java, LISP all have loops, so they are programming languages.  That is
the one and only criteria for something to be called a programming language.
Hope that settles that discussion.

Mike Cox on Sun, 15 Aug 2004 13:23:33 -0700 writes:

> ...anything that has a loop.  Since HTML doesn't have a loop anywhere, it 
is
> not a programming language.  Simple as that.
>
> PHP, Java, LISP all have loops, so they are programming languages.  That i
s
> the one and only criteria for something to be called a programming languag
e.
> Hope that settles that discussion.

So GIF is a programming language?

--
Marco Parrone <marc0@autistici.org> [0x45070AD6]

Nop. for a language to be general purpose it must be turing complete.
It can be turing complete without intrudusing loop by for instance
recursion. My-recursive functions implement turing completeness
without loops.


On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 13:23:33 -0700, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> ...anything that has a loop.  Since HTML doesn't have a loop anywhere,
> it is
> not a programming language.  Simple as that.
>
> PHP, Java, LISP all have loops, so they are programming languages.  That
> is
> the one and only criteria for something to be called a programming
> language.
> Hope that settles that discussion.
>
>



--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

>>>>> On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 13:23:33 -0700, Mike Cox ("Mike") writes:

Mike> ...anything that has a loop.  Since HTML doesn't have a loop anywhere,
Mike> it is not a programming language.  Simple as that.

I guess APL is not a programming language.
(Well, actually, APL does have loops, but they're not used much,
and are not normally used for the same purposes as in other languages.)

But HTML of course has loops, anyway.
Now perhaps you'll argue about whether it has state.
Eventually we can argue about the meaning of "is" is.

In article
<slrnchvqem.j0m.joostkremers@j.kremers4.news.arnhem.chello.nl>,
Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:

> far from it. Prolog doesn't have loops. do you want to claim it's not a
> programming language?

Prolog has recursion, which is a form of looping.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

In article <opscsm7skkpqzri1@mjolner.upc.no>,
"John Thingstad" <john.thingstad@chello.no> wrote:

> Nop. for a language to be general purpose it must be turing complete.
> It can be turing complete without intrudusing loop by for instance
> recursion. My-recursive functions implement turing completeness
> without loops.

Recursion is a way of performing loops.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> In article
> <slrnchvqem.j0m.joostkremers@j.kremers4.news.arnhem.chello.nl>,
>  Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>
> Prolog has recursion, which is a form of looping.

And looping isn't sufficient.  For example, a language whose only
looping structure were equivalent to dotimes wouldn't be Turing
equivalent, even though it would have looping.

Bruce Stephens wrote:

> Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
> 
>
>
> And looping isn't sufficient.  For example, a language whose only
> looping structure were equivalent to dotimes wouldn't be Turing
> equivalent, even though it would have looping.

Sure it would, jsut as long as it had something that served for
conditional execution -- see, for example, the original Connection
Machine primitives...

paul

Bruce Stephens wrote:

> Paul Wallich <pw@panix.com> writes:
> 
> 
>
> dotimes always terminates (presuming that altering the loop variable
> doesn't alter the looping---the hyperspec says it's undefined), so a
> language with only that would only be capable of expressing
> terminating algorithms, and conditional execution wouldn't help---you
> need some other form of looping, whether it's a jump or recursive
> functions or whatever.

...but you two are aware of the fact that you call these things with
only dotimes "languages"? ;)

"a language whose only..."

"a language with only that would..."

If you don't want to call these things languages, you have to invent
another term.


Pascal

--
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."

Pascal Costanza <costanza@web.de> writes:

[...]

> If you don't want to call these things languages, you have to invent
> another term.

I don't have a problem with calling such things languages.