So if CSS had a property named Text-Color that set the font size it would be logical, because it's all based on logic? CSS isn't a mathematical construct based on first principals. It's a spec that was created to layout print-media style webpages in the mid 90s.
Yes, it would still be logical. You translate from English “Text-Color” to font size. To a computer there is no meaning in what the words ever meant. There is just the logic of the parsing and execution. For example, it’s “font-size: 20px”, which is not English and already requires translation. That is would be “Text-Color: red” and that results in a font size of 20 pixels in a consistent manner is still logical!
It’s rather nonsensical though, you would have to admit. CSS isn’t a spec just for computers to parse, unless you consider it a write-only language written by savants.
The divide here is that I’m thinking in terms of a computer.
Programming is already “nonsensical” by your definition! Just ask a lay person! What we do as programmers is translate into machine instructions. Yes, “Text-Color” being used to declare font size is confusing, but so is a for loop to the untrained eye!
I think a more apt argument to make is that "text-color" means absolutely pig latin to those who don't speak English.
Their line of thought would be "Type 'text-color' to change the font size." (in their language, obviously) and it would be perfectly logical both from human and computer perspectives.
Very good point! I guess for English natives the insight would be in Japanese, "text color" is テキストカラー (tekisuto karā), and "font size" is フォントサイズ (fonto saizu).
That's just literally transcribing English to Japanese using katakana, to be fair.
Actual Japanese for text color would be "文書の色" (bunsho no iro) and font size would be "文字の大きさ" (moji no ookisa), and variants thereof.
So a Japanese dev who doesn't speak English would think: "文字の大きさを設定するために「text-color」と入力する。" and it would, again, make logical sense from both human and computer perspectives.
Riddle me this: why does this blog list a long set of rules as a justification instead of a single one "because a machine can process it to draw something coherent"? Could that be due to the fact that your definition is irrelevant for this conversation?
The author is missing a key understanding of how computers operate and any thesis that the human language is illogical to the computer system misses the point.
Logical and confusing are two different concepts and I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder why.
It might be messy, but it is being processed by a machine that is fundamentally based on logic!