Someone just starting to learn a technology is referred to as a beginner. But what are the various levels in terms of experience.
I have seen Beginner, Intermediate, Expert being used.
But is there just these three levels, or there are more, that is further break up. Is there any agreed standard to quantify experience levels.
You could scour the thesaurus for adjectives if you want to make something look impressive. But terms like those are only surface terms anyway. The real gauge is what someone has accomplished in a field or with a given technology. From there you can estimate that beginners have very little accomplished, intermediate have decent exposure, and experts can go into details for days about all the cool things they've done with it and how they can apply it.
The problem with trying to create a standard across technologies is that they really aren't comparable. It's not like military ranks where you can do a (nearly) 1:1 mapping for equality and comparison. Instead, it's a dynamic and often subjective process. This means when deciding where you (or someone else) lie in the scale you need to use your best judgement and find examples to back up the assessment.
Many employers quantify language experience in 'years used' or 'years used on the job'. Ultimately there is no universal definition of 'entry-level' programmer vs 'mid-level programmer', junior vs senior.
If an employer is looking to explicitly define a skillset a degree or certifications can be used, but there is variation in skill even within those.
There is no agreed standard for words indicating levels of experience, nor do most experienced hirers view experience as separated into discrete levels. Nor do words like "beginner" really tell the whole story. For instance, someone who is just beginning to learn Java with a strong C++ background is quite different from one with no object oriented programming experience.
I think there is "beginner" and "intermediate" and that is all. No one is an "expert" because there is always something new, at least if technology is still active and organic, like .NET. Maybe some are "advanced intermediate", but even that is pushing it.
I've seen "junior" being used to refer to those who need supervision, "mid-level" or "intermediate" (or no qualifier at all) for those who can work independently, and "senior" for those who can supervise others.
There is also the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition