The Urge to Correct an Intern's 'HTML Programming' Claim
Description
This is a meme using the 'Woman Holding Dog's Mouth Shut' format. In a restaurant or social setting, a woman's arm, labeled 'My brain', is physically holding the muzzle of a golden retriever, labeled 'Me'. The dog looks patient but constrained. In the background, another person is captioned 'New intern talking about his HTML programming skills'. The visual gag represents a senior developer's internal struggle. The 'Me' (the dog) wants to instinctively react - likely to correct or scoff at the intern's statement - while 'My brain' forces restraint and professionalism. The humor is rooted in a common piece of developer pedantry: HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. For experienced developers, hearing this mistake is a familiar, if slightly amusing, rite of passage when dealing with newcomers, making the meme highly relatable
Comments
10Comment deleted
My brain's interrupt handler has a special case for 'HTML programming' that pipes the output to /dev/null to avoid a kernel panic at the team lunch
I don’t correct interns who call HTML “programming” anymore - after they spend a sprint trying to center a div in three design systems, they’ll be begging for the simplicity of distributed consensus
After 20 years of explaining that HTML is a markup language, not programming, you realize the real skill is maintaining that golden retriever smile while your brain compiles a list of all the Turing-complete CSS implementations you could show them instead
When the new intern proudly lists 'HTML programming' on their resume, experienced developers experience what's known as a 'context switch to /dev/null' - their brain simply refuses to process the input and instead contemplates the heat death of the universe, much like this golden retriever contemplating absolutely nothing while maintaining perfect composure
I’ve learned the “HTML is programming” argument is Turing-complete - the conversation never halts, and nothing ships
Biting my tongue as the intern brags about his HTML “programming” - because our prod deploy hinges on a 700-line GitHub Actions YAML, and I’m not convinced that’s any more of a language
Intern calls HTML 'programming' - adorable, like claiming crayons qualify you for shader pipelines
we had an intern try to format a drive to "re-install the OS" Comment deleted
you mean, on a work PC? Comment deleted
yup Comment deleted