I was surfing the web and came across this book and its excerpts on the Pragmatic Programmers site. (A great site by the way).
It has put me in a reflective mood. I have always tagged myself as a software generalist. I don't specialize in any particular platform or framework. I specialize in technology and in understanding that most of what technology is built up on is recycled from previous iterations. There really is nothing truly *new*.
The above article just reinforces my belief that you have to keep running fast, but at the same time relax. If you have the proper training and a good "network" one can always find work. Just remember to invest in yourself frequently via education, experimentation and conversations.
I guess it boils down to trying as many new things as possible and keeping an open mind towards trends as they appear. As the article says Don't just call yourself a .Net or J2SE developer.
Then there is the become a specialist angle! Take the above argument and reverse it. Become a super knowledge expert. Own the space. Write the spec.
Not my bag of chips. I like knowing about lots of stuff, not just one single stack. I get bored with the specialization angle.
Comments
I love the idea so much, I have actually purchased through the site. I just wish that they had an RSS feed on the site. It has bugged me so much that I now run software to watch other sites for changes, and this script produces an RSS feed that I can subscribe to.