Mike's definition is certainly close to the concept most I know would
associate with a programming language.
JCL can control sequencing of program executions, but it is incapable of
expressing much in the way of useful computation directly via JCL alone.
One could argue that JCL is indeed a programming language, just with
very limited capabilities. Since variable manipulation is very
constrained and looping capability is totally absent, the subset of
functions JCL can compute is a pretty small subset of what is computable.
I can visualize approaches one might take to program a Universal Turing
Machine in languages like COBOL, Fortran, PL/I, C, Assembly, etc., which
suggests by Turing's Thesis that if one had an idealized runtime
platform that wasn't constrained by memory or time that in theory these
programming languages could compute any computable function.
I think is is equally obvious that without a looping construct,
implementing a Turing Machine purely in JCL would be totally out of the
question. So clearly JCL belongs in a lesser category than those
programming languages typically used to implement business algorithms.
I may be wrong, but I don't think HTML without embedded java or
javascript even has the limited computational capabilities of JCL. If
one allows that "HTML" includes the notion of HTML with java and
javascript, then it obviously qualifies as a programming language. If
you exclude java/javascript as being part of HTML, then I think one
would have to say HTML's capability is to define/describe a "structure",
not a "computation", which would rule it out.
Joel C Ewing
On 07/02/2010 04:01 PM, Ward, Mike S wrote:
> A programming language is an artificial language designed to express
> computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a
> computer.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of zMan
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 3:51 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Unix systems and Serialization mechanism
>
> OK, it's Friday afternoon, so time to broaden this a bit: Is HTML a
> programming language?
>
--
Joel C. Ewing, Fort Smith, AR [email protected]
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