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I have the impression that it's much easier for a specialist to go general than the other way around. As such, I would like to believe that you are much more co

I have the impression that it's much easier for a specialist to go general than the other way around. As such, I would like to believe that you are much more competitive than most generalists. Is this not your experience?

wheels 18y ago
It depends on the specialization. I've got a friend who's a complete expert in object oriented ABAP and doing consulting for large banks. Unfortunately for him, he hasn't written anything of significance in a programming language that can be used outside of an SAP system in almost a decade. He's bricked himself in to doing SAP consulting for the rest of his career. There are some specialization which are just harder than others. Systems programming is just harder than web programming. So if you take an average systems programmer and an average web programmer, statistically, the systems programmer is probably going to be smarter. That's not to say that there aren't brilliant web developers, just that there aren't many dumb systems programmers. It's kind of like saying if you took a biochemistry student and a history student, which one would you bet on for learning a new technical skill? Probably the biochemist. Beyond that, it's easier to fake being a generalist. If I need to learn a new skill to a superficial depth, I can in a few days if need be. This doesn't mean that I'd have all of those things in my tool-belt like a true generalist would, but under appropriately lax conditions I can still get the thing done. It's almost impossible to fake being a specialist, at least when it comes to completing a job. If you've never used an SAP system, you're not going to learn how to emulate my friend mentioned above in a few days. Hell, I worked for SAP for 4 years and I can't really understand what he does. So, to go back to your question -- are specialists more competitive? If their specialization is in demand certainly. If not it mostly depends on how smart they are.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  I guess the problem is my question is inherently murky. I was speaking with the assumption that specialization implies greater difficulty, greater practice, greater determination, and in effect, demands greater smarts. "Generalist" is being thrown around loosely here. A really good generalist is probably a specialist in being general. In other words, a good specialist goes really, really deep, but a good generalist goes really, really broad. Both are very difficult, and after this discussion, I think a majority of programmers won't fall into either, even if they think they do.

wheels 18y ago

It depends on the specialization. I've got a friend who's a complete expert in object oriented ABAP and doing consulting for large banks. Unfortunately for him, he hasn't written anything of significance in a programming language that can be used outside of an SAP system in almost a decade. He's bricked himself in to doing SAP consulting for the rest of his career. There are some specialization which are just harder than others. Systems programming is just harder than web programming. So if you take an average systems programmer and an average web programmer, statistically, the systems programmer is probably going to be smarter. That's not to say that there aren't brilliant web developers, just that there aren't many dumb systems programmers. It's kind of like saying if you took a biochemistry student and a history student, which one would you bet on for learning a new technical skill? Probably the biochemist. Beyond that, it's easier to fake being a generalist. If I need to learn a new skill to a superficial depth, I can in a few days if need be. This doesn't mean that I'd have all of those things in my tool-belt like a true generalist would, but under appropriately lax conditions I can still get the thing done. It's almost impossible to fake being a specialist, at least when it comes to completing a job. If you've never used an SAP system, you're not going to learn how to emulate my friend mentioned above in a few days. Hell, I worked for SAP for 4 years and I can't really understand what he does. So, to go back to your question -- are specialists more competitive? If their specialization is in demand certainly. If not it mostly depends on how smart they are.

whacked_new 18y ago
I guess the problem is my question is inherently murky. I was speaking with the assumption that specialization implies greater difficulty, greater practice, greater determination, and in effect, demands greater smarts. "Generalist" is being thrown around loosely here. A really good generalist is probably a specialist in being general. In other words, a good specialist goes really, really deep, but a good generalist goes really, really broad. Both are very difficult, and after this discussion, I think a majority of programmers won't fall into either, even if they think they do.