Re:Alan Kay's answer to ‘what are some forgotten books progr...
by catwell on Friday August 09, 2019 @11:36AM
(#20655324)
You can focus on breadth or depth depending on what kind of programmer (generalist or specialist) you want to be. Matt Klein (of Envoy) had a good thread about that on Twitter [1].
He focuses on depth whereas I tend to focus on breadth. Of course I have areas and technologies I know better because I have worked in / with them (computer vision, filesystem / DB replication algorithms, Lua, etc) but I try to expand my areas of knowledge so I can understand whole systems rather than become an expert at a specific thing. For instance, right now, I'm doing mostly Web front-end stuff, which is the part of the Web stack I know the least.
He focuses on depth whereas I tend to focus on breadth. Of course I have areas and technologies I know better because I have worked in / with them (computer vision, filesystem / DB replication algorithms, Lua, etc) but I try to expand my areas of knowledge so I can understand whole systems rather than become an expert at a specific thing. For instance, right now, I'm doing mostly Web front-end stuff, which is the part of the Web stack I know the least.
[1] https://twitter.com/mattklein123/status/1130206792175169536