I've pretty much given up any formal criteria for programming languages
and programmer titles. It is all in what we do with it, not something
intrinsic to computing.
That said, Turing-completeness is a fun topic, and frequently yields
results that aren't what the programming language purists want.
https://accodeing.com/blog/2015/css3-proven-to-be-turing-complete
Thanks,
Simon
On 3/11/2022 7:29 AM, Pete Cordell wrote:
> On 11/03/2022 08:48, Michael Kay wrote:
>> Well, I would say that XSD is indeed a "formal computer language",
>> but not a "programming language"; I don't think you can describe
>> something as a programming language unless it is Turing-complete.
>>
>> I don't know of any universally accepted categorisation scheme for
>> formal computer languages, and without such a scheme you can't say
>> where a particular language fits; but it's certainly reasonable to
>> describe XSD as a constraint specification language or as a data
>> definition language (if indeed those two categories are distinct).
>
> A related perma-topic is "Is HTML a programming language?"
>
> I'm in the "No, because it is not Turing-complete" camp (for example,
> it has no conditionals) but it does instruct a computer to do things
> and so others say it is.
>
> I'd say if "programming language" was a spectrum, HTML would be more
> of a programming language than XSD.
>
> To add more confusion, for most programming languages such as C++ and
> Java, it's very specific what the language tells the computer to do.
>
> With XSD, the XSD can be used in many ways by a computer. Does that
> suggest it is "something else"?
>
> Pete.
