I started out the chronicle  that I recently wrote giving an angle at the information society we live in today. This is also what I will cover as a starter in this first web 2.0 blog post.

For developers, the information society is very real indeed since the knowledge base required for programming is huge these days. I have only been in the industry for about 10 years, but even in this time I can surely notice the change from when I began. In the .NET field alone, which is my field of specialty, there are thousands of classes that are good to know of. It is not always that documentation provided from Microsoft covers the need that exists.  Also, the number of frameworks, libraries, components, third party open source products, tools etc seem to have exploded the last couple of years. It is not easy these days to call yourself an expert developer of .NET; Nor in any other programming domain for that matter. Most, if not all, people don’t call like to be called experts in such a broad field because of the expectations it may raise. My experience is that an overall humble attitude resides when it comes to programming knowledge nowadays. Something that is quite alright I think. We should be humble for the unknown I think.

Anyway, for developers, the provided information on the Internet has become a reliable source of information. This includes blogs, communities, articles, wikis etc. There is less of a need for developers today to keep track of all intricate details of language and frameworks since there are so many resources available out there. So many people share their experience in blogs and communities which many times makes is quite easy to find a solution to a specific problem.

However, we do have to distinguish between semantics and syntax. Syntax being the language we program in and I dare to say knowledge of the Frameworks provided to us; Semantics being how we program in the language and Frameworks. Both types of knowledge are to be found on the Internet. Semantics, however, is so much harder to learn than syntax knowledge. Semantics deal with the architecture and the design of software and this takes knowledge (lots of reading) and experienced practice (lots of programming).  We are talking years of studying and programming in a professional domain specific environment. The funny thing is that even though I think I’ve reached perhaps the middle of the tunnel, occasionally it seems like I am thrown back to the start of it due to some new experience or gained knowledge. What other profession allows you from time to time to have the sensation of being a rookie again?  To me, this is fun. And frustrating.

Well, this blog post kind of made the introduction of what I am hoping to become a series of blog post in the web 2.0 field. I have many thoughts to share, especially when it comes to wikis as software development tool in software projects. So stay tuned for upcoming post if you’re interested of my thoughts.