HTML is actually a programming language. Fight me

Learning any programming language is learning how to debug it. But a malformed command in Python usually returns an error message that prevents the code from running, which fails not gracefully but horribly, beyond the intentions of its creators. With HTML, we’re all Dr. Frankenstein.

One of my favorite websites ever is the Embroidery Troubleshooting Guide. These days are available only Via Internet ArchiveUnless you (like me) have a local copy. At the top, it looks like a typical small business website, albeit somewhat dated. But when you look down, you immediately notice something strange about him. The text, all center-aligned in alternating red and blue, gets progressively larger and larger, with phrases having to wrap lines or reach the edge in the middle of a word, filling the screen like Alice trying to squeeze through smaller and smaller doors in Wonderland.

When you view the source code (is there any other software that makes it as easy to view the source as a website?), you will quickly discover what went wrong. Each line of central text begins with

or

Head tags that never close. Each header tag—which specifies only a relative size, not an absolute size, and is part of the semantic richness of Elastic Web grammar—depends on the last tag, creating progressively larger nested dummies. A tag designed to define a textual hierarchy works chaotically, resulting in chaos. The fact that the words themselves are about how and why threads can break makes them poetry.

An embroidery troubleshooting guide by itself would be a clever enough piece of existing conceptual art. But by viewing the source, downloading the file, and replacing the instructions for troubleshooting common sewing mistakes with any text you want, you can make this work of art your own. I like to take my favorite poems, take them out of context and force myself to read them with fresh eyes.

“Broken” sites like this turn the great achievement of semantic HTML on its head. As it evolved, semantic HTML increasingly separated structure from presentation: instead We use tags, which precisely specify the presentation of text in italics Markers to determine focus (or Tags for book or movie titles, etc.). These elements can then be displayed as italics on a computer screen but read in a different tone by a screen reader. This embroidery troubleshooting guide takes the semantic marker and makes it offer something unexpected. The same basic elements that allow a single website to be displayed responsively on a small phone or huge TV screen can make a website essentially unviewable. This is exhilarating.

I appreciate the utility of complex content management systems and sites that generate HTML dynamically, but there’s fun in creating sites from simple HTML files that you can edit manually. I still edit my website this way, arranging it so I can see every tag, section, and paragraph break. I even like to edit my eBooks, converting PDF files into well-formatted, HTML-based EPUB files that are never published to anyone: my own library of self-contained websites. During the height of the pandemic, manually editing these files and their stylesheets was a balm.

In the end, even after HTML became the preserve of professionals, it could not be controlled. This is what makes many programmers so anxious about the web, and sometimes pathetically desperate to maintain the literal walls they have erected between software engineers and web developers. But people who write HTML know that hierarchies are designed to be inflated. All it takes is a sign that doesn’t close where you expect it to.

What other programmers might say dismissively is something HTML fans embrace: Anyone can do it. Whether we use complex frameworks or very simple tools, HTML promises that we can build, make, and program He does Anything we want.