Specialist and generalists

15 Oct 2004 22:03 - (0) comments

As the web gets more mature the knowledge needed for used techniques get exponentially larger. From using photoshop and creating html/css and xslt to programming Java, Ruby, Python, ect. Of course some techniques get less popular and eventually die. And a lot of techniques use the same patterns. The more programming languages you know, the more similarities you'll see, and the easier it is to learn.

Still you can't have knowledge of everything, so you need to specialize. But being a specialist doesn't mean you shouldn't have good knowledge of areas that border on your expertise. Your skills need to nicely interface with bordering areas.

Of course this isn't absolute and people need to learn new skills. But if a 'webdesigner' doesn't know how to make stylesheets and needs someone else to do this for him/her it costs a lot of extra time. First the designer designs a screen that could be built a lot better and faster if the designer has good css knowledge. Then the 'html-builder' has to create the html/css and will need to communicate with the designer if the screen looks good. If done by a single person or two persons with good knowledge of design and html/css this can be done a lot quicker (in my experience about 3 times less).

Another example is the Architects don't code pattern:

How can someone who never writes a line of code be responsible for how that code will be written? Design and coding are two sides of the same coin. You cannot design if you cannot code and you cannot code if you cannot design.