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Re: Should XML Professionals Be Programmers?

• From: cbullard@hiwaay.net
• To: liam@w3.org
• Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:28:28 -0600

In organizations that understand how to process information such that  
creating the XML is efficient and accurate, this can be so.  If an  
organization doesn't have that understanding, then being able to  
program to a level consistent with  the objectives is how one can  
achieve them effectively.

On the other hand, if the supervisor says "I pay you to do XML, not  
program", then it's pretty obvious that they don't understand the  
objectives and effective ways to meet them.  The "tagger" philosophy  
is actively harmful.  It is a mindset we supported to get editors that  
enable correct by construction editing, but I think we were wrong or  
expected too much of these tools and harmed our industry.

len


Quoting Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>:

> On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 10:27 -0600, Len Bullard wrote:
>> It's a general qualifications question:  do you expect an XML
>> professional to:
>
>> 1.	Be able to correctly interpret DTD/Schema?
>> 2.	Write or modify a DTD/Schema
>> 3.	Code and/or test and modify XSLT.
>> 4.	Program at least to a level of proficiency to build simple
>> productivity tools (for example, basic querying of XML in some form)
>
> Not necessarily.
>
> Someone doing day-to-day text processing will be much more productive if
> they can write scripts, use regular expressions, and do not wear overly
> restrictive clothing.
>
> If that day-to-day work involves _creating_ schemas, or working with
> multiple types of document, familiarity with the validation languages in
> use may be a distinct plus, for sure.
>
> "What Every Unix Programmer Should Know" isn't all that far away from
> "What Every XML Developer Should Know" in practice, with languages like
> XLST, XSD and XQuery taking the place of shell scripts, sed scripts and
> awk programs.
>
> The big questions are not only "does she know the details?" but, "does
> he work with the bigger picture in mind?"  Introducing XML into a
> workflow involves understanding how the people and necessary tasks
> interact, and that's a different sort of skill than programming.
>
> Similarly, transcribing and marking up XML documents (medieval Greek
> travel diaries, for example) may require understanding of the documents
> and they way they use structure and language - their rhetorical nature,
> if you will - and again that's not primarily a programming perspective,
> although in designing the markup it's necessary to discuss needs with
> whoever will be responsible for processing the marked up documents.
>
> There's no single answer.
>
> Liam
>
> --
> Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
> Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
>
>
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• References:
  • Should XML Professionals Be Programmers?
    • From: "Len Bullard" <Len.Bullard@ses-i.com>
  • Re: Should XML Professionals Be Programmers?
    • From: Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>