It used to be that there wasn't a debate. There was a choice of whether to be a jack-of-all-trades or not, but it was always pretty clear that both sides had a

It used to be that there wasn't a debate. There was a choice of whether to be a jack-of-all-trades or not, but it was always pretty clear that both sides had advantages, and both sides were needed for a functioning system. Nobody debated whether each side was needed. It's even murkier today, though, because while I'm a specialist (IT), and I'm a specialist (programming), I'm also a generalist (web, mobile, desktop... I do it all) and that kind of thing didn't really happen before. You were a handyman, or an electrician. Not some weird hybrid of the 2 where you went down 1 specialized path, only to branch out at the end.