HTML is a programming language. Hit me

Learning any programming language is learning how to program. But an error command in Python often returns an error message that prevents the code from working, not something that fails gracefully but badly, beyond the intent of the developer. With HTML, we are all Doctor Frankenstein.

One of my all time favorite sites is the Embroidery Troubleshooting Guide. Today they are only available via the Internet Archiveunless (like me) you have a local copy. On the surface, it looks like a simple, old-fashioned, small business website. But when you look down, you immediately notice something strange. The words, all connected between alternating red and blue Arial, gradually grow and grow, and the words are forced to wrap the lines or reach the edges of the words, filling the screen like Alice trying to squeeze the small and small doors in Wonderland. .

When you see the source code (did some software make it easy to see the source as a page?), you’ll quickly realize what went wrong. Each line of the middle word begins with

or

header tags that don’t close. Each chapter – which only determines the size, not the absolute, part of the weight of the words of the grammar of the Internet – is attached to the end, creating large dolls. The tag used to describe the word authority is amok, causing confusion. The fact that the text is about how and why a thread can break makes it a poem.

On its own, the Embroidery Troubleshooting Guide can be a great resource for crafters. But by browsing the source, downloading the file, and replacing the general troubleshooting tips with any text you like, you can make the graphics your own. I like to put my favorite poems in, take them out and force myself to read them with fresh eyes.

“Broken” pages like this contribute to the great success of semantic HTML. When it first started, semantic HTML was distinguished by the form: Instead of tags, which explicitly specify that text should be italicized, we use tags to detect emphasis (or tags for titles of books or movies, etc.). These items may be viewed as text on a computer screen but are read differently by a screen reader. The Embroidery Troubleshooting Guide hijacks the semantic tag and causes it to show unexpected results. The same architecture that allows a single page to display on a small phone or a large television can render that page unreadable. This is interesting.

I appreciate using content management and complex web pages that generate HTML quickly, but there’s joy in building pages from simple HTML files that you can edit by hand. I still organize my site like this, fine-tuning it so that I can see each tag, section, and section. I also like to edit my ebooks, turning PDFs into well-designed HTML EPUB files that are not published to anyone: my personal private library of websites. During the height of the epidemic, changing these files and their documents by hand was the cure.

Ultimately, even though HTML has become the domain of experts, it cannot be kept at the gate. This is what makes many programmers worry so much about the Internet, and sometimes they want to keep the virtual walls they have set up between programmers and web developers. But people who write HTML know that hierarchies are designed to be blown up. All it takes is a tag that doesn’t close where you’d expect.

What some programmers might say casually is what HTML enthusiasts embrace: Anyone can do it. Whether we’re using complex frameworks or simple tools, the promise of HTML is that we can design, create, code, and to do whatever we want.