reflections on HTML energy

I was thinking a little about HTML energy here -- like what things are more "HTML energy" and what things are less. (As people were asking me about it, I realized it does feel more like a spectrum or way to compare things, rather than a hard in/out criterion.)

CSS and JS? they feel more HTML energy if they're in a style= or onclick= attribute or something, instead of being a block in a style tag or script tag.

HTML energy is kind of against abstraction and against having to do a lot of 'programming' before you see anything on the screen -- it's about typing concrete documents, you type the word 'hello' in an empty HTML document and you see 'hello' on the screen, then you decide you want that 'hello' to be red and you turn it red.

HTML energy is about making a particular word red or

PHP feels more HTML energy than node.js or Python.

Deprecated tags like font and color and center and big and blink and marquee are very HTML energy -- just being like, I want this thing to blink, putting the tag around it, rather than writing a lot of code in a separate language to orchestrate it. Not worrying about the standards imposed by fancy HTML people.

Doing layout with tables is very HTML energy.

Somehow, older HTML is more HTML energy than newer HTML. Newer HTML is meant to be used alongside JavaScript and CSS, it has clear semantics, it's a 'standard', it's just part of these larger platforms and toolchains. Older HTML is something you were meant to write by hand.

(it reminds me of old assembly languages -- before RISC, before machine code was mostly just a target for compilers -- languages that are low-level but meant to be written by a human hand)