Web developers and programming

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Am I the only one who sees a difference between the two? I refuse to see a strict web developer as a programmer. When I think of web development I think of HTML, Javascript, SQL, PHP, ASP, etc. These people write scripts that are interpreted by my browser. They aren't making a compiled standalone application or even an applet or service. Why do they think they're the same as a programmer?

Sure, you can do a lot of the same things as a program with your web pages but I wouldn't classify your webpage as a program, I would classify what you make as a script amongst other scripts which can possibly utilize some databasing. When I think of a programmer I think of someone who makes applications, not webpages.

What do you guys think?

Also, Python and Lua, while I love them both I consider them both scripting languages. I'm able to interpret them from a program I make and they're interpreted languages so I don't consider them as a compiled product, am I wrong some how? I seem to be getting major hate from people on other circles for my opinion on this I'm wondering if there is something about scripting and programming I missed or I'm not understanding correctly.

I understand what you're saying. But a lot of 'applications' are web based now because of the convenience. The html etc is just a front end for the code that runs on the server. I develop web applications using Microsoft technologies, but most of what I do is middle tier C# code and database stuff. I do the front end stuff in ASP.NET MVC, which renders as html, and do bits of client side Javascript. But I still see myself as a programmer because it would be very similar if I was doing windows applications. Hope this makes sense.

I completely agree with.

Developing != Programing

What I develop is server side code, so it runs on the web server, e.g. a dll. There's no way for a user to access that. All the web front end does is allow input of data and displays data. I think you're confusing client side scripting with server side code. There isn't much that you can't do in a web based application for typical business applications. I think you need to pick the tool for the job in general. Most stuff I'd do web based as it's easier to deploy to just one place, but there will always be places for windows applications and services.

There's a distinction here - some technologies like HTML, Javascript, etc. only run on the user's web browser. So maybe someone who only does those things is might be best labeled as "merely" a web developer, but Javascript, for instance, can be made to do some pretty complicated stuff.

Other technologies, like PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP etc. are primarily used to create web pages, but they run on the web server. There's really not any difference between programming a web page in ASP.NET (lets say C#) that will go and retrieve data from the database, then use standard ASP.NET web controls to display the data, than there would be building a similar Windows Forms application in C# that retrieves and displays the same data. These technologies are basically full fledged programs, whose output happens to be HTML but are fully capable of all the behind the scenes logic as any other type of program. Some of these are "mere" scripting languages, but others ultimately get compiled to a DLL or a JAR file the same as any other program, though the steps taken to compile them might be different.

Yeah, some of these tools are a whole different ball game from scripting languages.

There's a sense that scripting languages defy any attempt to develop an application architecture, whereas programming languages do not, and I think that's where the dividing line is.

But take something like Wordpress, which is developed purely in scripting languages (counting PHP as such) and SQL. I hate Wordpress' architecture, but I have to grudgingly concede that it does HAVE an architecture, and so I would certainly characterize it as an application and not merely a script.

But another way of looking at it is that a script is not designed to create tools, merely to connect tools. So a script lacks innate extensibility. It is unable to grow without external assets or sinister contortions.

So in that sense I'd say that Wordpress is really a scripted platform rather than an application, and that PHP is a scripting language and not a programming language. PHP really is not designed to let you extend its capabilities. Pretty much of all of its capabilities exist because some open source dork said "X technology looks useful, I'll add a PHP function that accesses it!" But the actual connectivity process involves rewriting PHP itself.

But asp.net/C# on the other hand can absolutely grow. That is very much a programming language, and it is designed for user extensibility. DLL's, user controls, custom controls, inheritance, and many other features all combine to allow you to expand an asp.net application as far as you like. The boundaries of the technology are infinite. If you think "hey I want a way to add an HTML tag that renders an animated giraffe, with its neck length adjustable by an attribute in the tag!", you can do that with asp.net very easily. You just build a custom control or something. THEN you can even release the resulting .dll as a downloadable component that other people can use in THEIR asp.net applications. You can even charge for that, and protect your source code from theft. All without having to change anything IN asp.net or C#. Or how about a component that performs an application security task, like monitoring who has access to the current page, and determining what to show to them and what not to? Or something that adds an event scheduling system to a website?

Once you get your head around a capability like that, you begin to understand just how wide the gulf is between scripting languages and programming languages, and between web developers and software developers who happen to work in the web.

Still, there's a lot of fuzzy space inside that gulf. Wordpress is a perfect example. They've pushed the scripting to the limit and it's hard to argue that the result is a script rather than an application. And it's not because of how many files it consists of, or how extensible the result is, or other metrics like that.

It's just because it seems, on balance, to have been architected and not just assembled.

But it can go either way.

What about Unix shell scripting? Is that considered as programming?

I think that good programmers have experience with both compiled languages and scripting languages and know which is the best choice for a particular application. Some applications are comprised of several modules written in a compiled language connected together with a scripting language.

HTML is not a programming language. It is a mark up language in a similar way that LaTeX is, and VHDL and Verilog show similar characteristics.