Context:<p>I got caught in this classic heated debate on Twitter https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1429021526221852680<p>People got all tribal about it and touchy as always, and even though many of the authors followers who said that HTML and CSS are programming languages and that they should be enough for getting a job, even tho most people are agreeing with him, he still had to resort to throwing insults my way.<p>https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1429166991110193157
The job market decides what skills get someone hired. That has nothing to do with how we might describe HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are markup languages, not general-purpose programming languages.<p>The distinction is important in the job market because if you only use HTML and CSS you can only create static web pages. That may be good enough for a small subset of web development but it’s not enough for a web application with user interaction beyond clicking links and buttons, or with any persistent state (like a database). Whether we call HTML/CSS “programming languages” or not makes no difference. The “gatekeeping” comes from lack of sufficient utility.
No, it's not gatekeeping, it's just incorrect. It is, I would say, correct to say that it's not a general purpose programming language, but that's true of SQL as well. For that matter, Assembler, a specialized language which you would never have a human programmer use directly to, say, style a web page.<p>The real issue is that there are more people who want programming jobs, who know only HTML and CSS, than there are jobs which require only HTML and CSS. But, you know, when you're locked out of a job market by something that is not quickly fixable, it's difficult to be dispassionate about it. Sometimes, if people are "touchy", there isn't anything you can say to calm things down, and the best idea is to leave the conversation. Rarely, after it gets to that point, is there anything you're going to miss by leaving.
It's not gatekeeping. CSS and HTML aren't programming languages, and that's okay. Since no one is going to hire someone who only knows CSS and HTML, it's a moot point anyway.