Sophie Koonin
Large Heydon ColliderThe reason people who hate CSS simultaneously don't think it is a programming language is because they never moved past the piecemeal "add color to thing, add height to other thing" approach. When you start dealing in rules/constraints, forging *algorithms* that respond to contexts... then you are really writing CSS. And really programming.
holothuroid@heydon I started to use the term "application language". If it's useful in creating an application, it is one. No matter if it's Haskell, rust, Java Sql, HTML, css, regex, LDAP, yaml or cron expressions. @danielaKay
Garrett LeSage@holothuroid However, CSS *is* a programming language.
Deep dive video (Algorithms in CSS, presentation by Lara Schenck — it's amazing and entertaining too; watch it):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dtddBM8s7xY
Blog post version:
https://notlaura.com/css-is-a-programming-language/
Additionally, CSS + HTML is Turing complete:
https://notlaura.com/is-css-turing-complete/
/cc: @heydon @danielaKay
Lara Schenck | Algorithms in CSS | CSS Day 2019
Everything correct of course, and thanks for the video. I just got very very tired discussing it with people.
Stephen BelovarichWikipedia defines CSS as a “style sheet” language, which doesn’t deny it’s programmatic aspects.
rem@heydon this is meant as *genuinely I don't know if it's possible* (and I've thought about it but not enough and not laterally enough), would it be possible to complete (or attempt) adventofcode.com using CSS? (It'd certainly be stupid fun if it is)
@heydon nevermind, of course the answer was *yes*! https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/zeichc/2022_day_4csshtml_css_is_not_a_programming/
Danielle Navarro@heydon I love this because it feels like a proper description of what CSS does but also it is not - and I say this as an artist primarily - how I think about visual elements. The hard part, for me, is grasping how images are constructed solely from constraints rather than a generative grammar. CSS and I have a very tense lovehate relationship I think