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There is value in specialization. You denigrate the OP with your condescending "too busy doing whizbang gollygee Important Work" and mischaracterize him as usi
by mdc 14y ago
There is value in specialization. You denigrate the OP with your condescending "too busy doing whizbang gollygee Important Work" and mischaracterize him as using words like "silly and useless", but the OP never said that. All he said is that he's focused on one part of the work and doesn't know that much about the others.
I've been considering these choices a lot. In my own career, I've made a conscious choice to pursue lots of different things that I found interesting, but I've become a generalist, pretty good at lots of different things but lacking the deep domain knowledge in any one of them that a specialist gains. You seem to be arguing that specialists should not exist, everyone should go for broad rather than deep. I think there's a place for both, and becoming a specialist often requires the discipline to stay focused and not pursue every interest and curiosity that rears it's distracting head.
I think there's value in a programmer knowing the whole stack, from language APIs to hardware implementations, and being able to understand the consequences of every line of code. But time is finite and someone at the beginning of their careers must make choices on where to build their expertise.