I disagree with this sentiment. >Everybody has to do everything. Everybody needs to have _at least some degree of familiarity_ with everything, yes. But that

I disagree with this sentiment. >Everybody has to do everything. Everybody needs to have _at least some degree of familiarity_ with everything, yes. But that has always been the case. There is not and there never has been a job posting for someone to design algorithms and do nothing else, nor to deploy HTTP servers and nothing else. I expect that if you pick any part of any software/hardware stack, anyone with a reasonable amount of experience would be able to give real-world examples where familiarity with several (and sometimes all) other parts of that stack are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary. I also expect that illustrations would be able to found from any point in the history of computing, up to and including now.