• by Mark Kecko , June 13, 2002

Programming languages inspire lots of questions from non-programmers: ‘What’s the difference?’ ‘Why are there 20 different programming languages that run on 10 different platforms?” “Can’t these hi-tech guys come up with standards?”

Each programming language has its own strengths and weaknesses, and creating a useful website or online application usually means using more than one. We’ll start with HTML—Hypertext Markup Language—because most websites are written in it. It’s an easily implemented and easily learned formatting tool for text and graphics on web pages. The language’s syntax is simply text wrapped in “less than” and “greater than” signs, like this: text. The word “text” would appear in bold type on a web page. Some other HTML tags are , italic, and
, line break, etc. HTML also allows form objects like text fields and checkboxes (as in a registration form, for example).

Unfortunately, that’s where HTML’s capabilities end. You get the functionality to build a form but not to process the information gathered with the form. HTML doesn’t really do anything in terms of processing or organizing data. That is not to say HTML is insignificant. In fact, it’s the most important programming language when it comes to programming the web and it’s not going anywhere.

So why do we need other programming languages? As the 468x60 banner has taught us, people grow tired of static pages. That’s where Java comes in. JavaScript can open new browser windows, write cookies, open email programs, and access a myriad of other functions. JavaScript can also be used to format and display text but is less flexible than HTML—the JavaScript function to write the bold text would look something like this: document.write(“text”).

JavaScript’s strengths? Well, it runs on the client side—a web user’s computer—while that user is looking at a web page. This gives a competent programmer the ability to interact with users, allowing for a more personalized web experience. It also allows HTML to be dynamically created using programming conditionals and loops (more on this next month). Drawbacks? People have the ability to turn JavaScript functionality off in their browser, creating havoc for sites that depend on it to function. And malevolent or non-professional web designers can easily inflate hits on a site by using JavaScript to open new browser windows that open to a particular homepage whenever a user closes the previous window.

For more information on programming languages, visit the Yahoo directory for Computers and Internet. Next month we’ll discuss some languages that make good use of programming logic and database connectivity