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Generally speaking, HTML doesn't have the constructs necessary to actually compute things. There's no way to declare variables, and there are no conditionals, jumping, or mathematical operations. All you can do is specify a fixed set of page elements.

Embedded JS within HTML doesn't count here, as that's essentially no different than a linked script file.

To be fair, there are some exceptions to this; there are some very hacky and convoluted ways you might be able to get some programmatic behavior out of pure HTML (I remember hearing about a weird example in part of Wikipedia's codebase).

HTML literally means hypertext markup language. It's more like TeX or Markdown, in that it's used to store and represent data, not to manipulate it.



> All you can do is specify a fixed set of page elements.

I'm not denying this but rather questioning why this means the document which specifies this is not a program. The previous sentences describe why it's not Turing-complete, which is moot to whether it's a programming language.

> HTML literally means hypertext markup language. It's more like TeX or Markdown, in that it's used to store and represent data, not to manipulate it.

I disagree that HTML is not used to manipulate data. Unless you mean to say that it doesn't manipulate it directly but I think that's also moot. My day job is to use HTML to build forms that are used to accept user input for data manipulations. It seems to me that I'm programming the browser to render the correct form and the language I'm using for the programming is HTML.

Besides, being used only to store and represent data does not seem to necessarily preclude it being a programming language. "Program" is a word that's used to describe a presentation of some kind. A wind ensemble might perform a "program" of pieces on concert night.




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