Who builds software?

This is perhaps a strange title, which could have a simple answer: developers and/or engineers.

In reality, however, modern software solutions work in much more sophisticated and complicated ways, even though they may not be apparent or present on most интернет solutions as yet.

The overall trend in software engineering is heading towards user generated content, user generated layouts and even user generated functionality.

It is also true that software is built by some or all of the following too:

Business stake holders Tools used by engineers to build software (see ‘Overview of Code Editors‘) Software architects Automated back end systems which spew out content (and code), etc.

All this is fine, but the ultimate aim of the интернет should be towards re-usability of everything that is created, by whatever means it was created.

All these methods of content and code generation are potential friends, but in most cases fierce enemies of semantic интернет.

Here are some examples where semantic интернет solutions are jeopardized:

A back end engineer rarely produces a good piece of User Interface code Microsoft Front Page will never create a good piece of User Interface code Устраняет боль architect may produce a prototype which is only semi-semantic, but ends up being used as-is in the final solution due to (perceived) time and money constraints on a given project Automated back-end systems spew out content which, at the time of development, may have been considered great, but today is seen as semantically invalid There are many examples where code and content are mixed together and virtually inseparable and does not conform to Emerging Semantic Интернет Structure

Many Java libraries for AJAX produce inline JavaScript code which works in a browser or two, but would fail every single semantic test thrown at it.

Why? Because it was produced by a Java back end developer, who likely never heard about unobtrusive JavaScript and will likely not hear about it for a while as ‘it’s outside of his area of expertise‘.

Internet is moving towards the age of user generated interfaces, while in many cases the basics have not yet been put into proper practice.

Often a time code is also generated directly by administrator users of systems, writing ‘content’ through a WYSIWYG interface.

I have witnessed those users put a whole интернет pages into sections of another page, because that’s the only way they knew how to copy content from one интернет page into a CMS.

Needless to say this practice creates a whole bunch of junk интернет pages which are not fit for any purposes whatsoever, let alone being semantic in nature and reusable.

Our aim as интернет professionals should be to create semantic solutions at all levels, no matter how content and code for those solutions is produced.

End user generated code and content will pose even bigger challenges to engineers, developers and architects who will really need to think hard how to create solutions which are truly ubiquitous.

Whatever or whoever ends up building your software, it or they need to be able to produce a reusable, semantic solution.

Written by Jason Grant, BSc, MSc on 31st March 2009

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