Rich Cairns Assignment 1

Rich Cairns

Business on the Information Highways

First Writing Assignment

Page created 17 April  2007; rewritten in its entirety for a new topic on 2 May 2007

            Hypertext markup language (HTML) is the language used to write and edit web-pages.  A relatively simple “programming language”, HTML is still very mystical to most people.  While you cannot expect all people to understand how HTML works, or even to code in HTML, it is not unreasonable to expect they at least know what it does.  And the sad fact is that they do not.  The language, using tags to format text in different ways, is in my opinion the easiest programming language to learn, and has many practical uses.  We are a generation that has essentially grown up with computers, and more importantly the modern internet.  The fact that so many of us have no idea what makes the web-pages we “surf” show up, is a bit concerning.  In an age where facebook (a social networking site that gives each person a “homepage”) rules the lives of most college students, it is surprising to find out that many of these students can’t even create the simplest of web-pages.  This ignorance to HTML is what inspired me to create a site that hosts both an HTML tutorial and an HTML reference guide.  The importance of HTML is not just skin deep.  In recent years, and clearly in years to come, multiple expansions have been incorporated into HTML.  These include XML and XHTML.  While these are extreme topics in and of themselves, they share the same basic principles and concepts that HTML employs.  A basic understanding of the workings of HTML will give the casual user a better appreciation to how the web works, and why sometimes it appears to be “broken.”  The future of HTML is uncertain.  If I had to predict where HTML would be in ten to fifteen years, I would most likely say it would be non-existent.  HTML will most likely be replaced by a new web programming language (however this must be done slowly).  The new language will, most definitely, not be a complete restructure of programming logic and conventions.  It will, most likely, take lessons from HTML, XHTML, and other languages and incorporate them all.  This is why it will be important to understand the general concepts of HTML.  It is like a spring board into the new, possibly more complex, web-programming languages of the future.