Before diving further into learning to program, I would have probably exclaimed that I knew how to program because I once edited my myspace theme. Now, I find myself having this conversation dozens of times, often with an internal eye roll after:
“What are you going to school for?”
“I’m studying computer science.”
“Oh awesome, I learned how to program, I used HTML on myspace!”
Since then, I learned pretty quickly how HTML is NOT a programming language. Even though it may have been mine and many other people’s first experience with “coding”, I don’t think there is much argument for HTML being a programming language. However, can there be an argument made for CSS?
CSS or cascade style sheets were intended to allow for more freedom with styling HTML webpages. It allowed people to apply the same style across multiple webpages and allowed for more advanced features than the markup language provided. Sure, it makes HTML look good, but how does that make it a programming language?
In one of my previous jobs, I was required to keep our website fresh and dynamic. Since most of our team was did not come from a tech background, we had our website hosted through a third party to make it easier to create a database to manage events. However, the “wow” factor was non existent because we had to go through the third party to make an custom pages. In an effort to make sure clients didn’t ruin their sites, our third party management system did not allow us to make any customization beyond HTML and CSS, custom JavaScript scripts were not allowed. I did my best by creating several style sheets to make the design look better, but my team wanted to do more, and when they found out how much it was to pay someone else to do it, they wanted me to figure it out. They wanted animations and special effects. It turns out I had to the tools to make these changes, I just didn’t know it.
Through CSS I was able to make animations that I thought were only possible in JavaScript. I was able to program auto scrolling. I created custom countdowns for certain promotions, manipulate data based on what the user wanted to see. I could create elements that appeared on a click or disappeared with a hover of the cursor. I can even create a clock that lets the user know the current time.
I think all these examples are in favor of saying CSS is a programming language. However, I think the answer, lies somewhere in the middle. CSS was not initially designed to perform as a programming language. It was designed to make the styling of HTML pages easier. Therefore, one could make the argument that it’s not a programming language. Still, if someone is using CSS beyond it’s original intentions, like described above, it can be considered a programming language.
