Re: Got keep learning or being professional with Web standards

Gosh, there were lots of good points in this discussion. If I may add my two
cents to it:

* Regarding younger vs. older "professionals": Learning means making
mistakes, and experience is priceless. There are definitely (young) people
out there who think they "get it" (because they never used tables for layout
purposes, for example), but this does not mean they really understand the
problems. Those out there who are in business for half a decade or longer
will have understood the problems. For them, hopefully, semantics isn't just
a buzzword.

* Education is the real issue. At least in Germany, you can't get a good
education which teaches you Web Standards (which basically means semantics
and standard compliance). Huh. And Web Standards are neither a big deal, nor
are they the entire story - a real Web professional should also have at
least fundamental knowledge in Accessibility and Usability (merely means
processes). And that's not all, either - what about Design (in general),
Architecture, Typography, Journalism, HCI, UX, Web Credibility, SEO, also
technologies apart from (X)HTML and CSS. Ah, and there a lots of other
interesting topics you could and should also use in your work (Psychology is
no bad start, either, for example).

* Well, education is also an issue when it comes to where people tend to
look to go learning. If you really want to establish fundamental, reliable
knowledge, blogs rarely help. Fora do neither. You need to read the specs,
and look for other resources that are built by real experts, by luminaries,
to be more precise. Well, how do you find these resources? This is something
more experienced people will know, because they either already know who is
an expert and who is not, but it rather boils down to that you need to be
capable to quickly assess whether a resource is trustworthy or not. This is
something the "Information Society" demands from us, and it's also an
experience thing.

* To do your work, you need to learn. And to master your work, you
permanently need to learn.

Enough said. I enjoy this discussion, it is important.


-- 
Jens Meiert
Information Architect

http://meiert.com/

| Webdesign mit CSS (O'Reilly, 228 pages, German)
| In theatres November 28th: http://meiert.com/cssdesign/

Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2005 23:10:33 UTC