[MACCAWS] Terminology (was: alt tags? valid code?)

On Sunday, July 21, 2002, at 10:56 PM, kevin c smith wrote:

> X)HTML isn't code, it's markup.

I know Steven Champeon likes to be pedantic about this, but I 
really think
this is the old "Perl is scripting, not programming" rant in
disguise. Looking at the various definitions from the Jargon File, 
The Free
Online Dictionary of Computing and the like they all hinge on separating
machine instructions from data. If markup doesn't fit into the 
'instruction'
category, I don't know what does.

I feel using 'code' as a blanket term for markup, scripting, 
programming,
macros, style rules, etc. and then differentiating by using 
specific terms
when appropriate solves some otherwise tricky linguistic problems, 
such as
what to call someone who writes markup.[1]


chris.kaminski { functionNewMedia :: <http://www.function.de> }

[1] Yeah, OK, 'author,' but to my mind authoring markup and 
authoring an article, book, etc. are fundamentally different tasks 
and shouldn't be confused by identical nomenclature. Using 'coder' 
as a general term for someone writing machine instructions of any 
sort, however, leaves the term 'programmer' for those doing 
programming, 'scripter' for those doing scripting and 'developer' 
for those doing architecture as well as some of the above.