Friend: What's your favorite language?

Me: Javascript.

Friend: But it isn't a programming language.

Me: *throws keyboard at her face*

Exactly! ++ To you

I bet the next half of the conversation went like this:

You: "Well what language is a programming language?"

Friend: "HTML"

You: *repeatedly bashes friend's face with keyboard*

Once and for all: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...

@Trey50Daniel i say to those people:
Write a program without any other language that prints 10 times "Hello World". Oh, and you must write it at maximum 1 time in the sourcecode.

CSS too.

@Jasey that's a bit of a trick question 'cause I don't think there's a real definition of "programming language".
But no, HTML is generally not considered as a programming language. You can't write an algorithm with HTML, you can't even compute anything ! It is purely descriptive

@stop Python can do it)

This brings the following video back to my mind ^^
https://youtu.be/uNVjOzTIGxU

@Ignisor My definition of a programming language is simple:
1. The language must provide loops
2. It must provide an interface for input and output.

@stop an automata could do that too (i.e. a regexp)
I like the Turing completeness definition which claims that it can implement a turing machine (somewhat like the Enigma)

@matanl its based on the turing complete programing language.

@stop when you write [a]* in regexp it's also a loop though. And you do have input and output there.

Thanks @matanl i think i must extend this with a third rule:
3. It must capable of modifing the input, for example to reverse the input.

@rantOverflow that is a problem, i am the cause that every cat disapears in my neighbourhood. :)))

@stop a stack can also reverse the input, i.e. a smart regexp which also holds a stack data structure beside it. It's 1 level below turing complete, but close 1 🙂

The issue I am seeing is that people are confusing "Programming Language" with "Compiled Language". Both Scripting and Compiled Languages are Programming Languages. Compiled is... well.. compiled, while Scripting runs on the fly and depends on a Run-time server.

I could be wrong on this. Javascript is a generic term for the collection of languages each browser interprets as their javascript. The standardized version is ECMAscript, the official form of js.

This exact same topic is going on in another thread. I feel like it's groundhogs days instead of Easter.

@tizo it's going on in 3 different threads. I've been copy and pasting.

@fyroc pure craziness. Thank you for your rational answers.

@stop Some languages (Haskell etc) do not have explicit loops.

@osmarks recursion?

@stop Yes. So I think it should be "capable of executing the same piece of code multiple times".

@provector exactly!

I have to say, based on the rant, that your friend did not ask for a favorite programming language, the question was just for a fav lang... So you were just being geeky.

Also excessive use of force in these situations is just excessive. Take a chill pill and avoid damaging perfectly good keyboards

VB

@Ignisor Indeed I can, thank you :)

Haha!! Sometimes JS feels like its a combination of various language and it's more than powerful of a single programming language.

the fact that in 2020 this now has the undefined tag makes this funnier

@calmyourtities 😂😂😂 I have no idea why I am here