There was an article posted here a month or so ago about how this guy was seeing a new class of worker emerge who both understood the necessity of absorbing knowledge from other domains and enjoyed the process. It reminded me of a dev I worked with who'd go on smoke breaks with the art department and then change data structures we'd been using forever.

I was under the assumption this type of worker is what dominated before the industrial revolution constrained people to a small domain in a process. Some may call it artisan, dilettante, etc. Maybe the narrow-domain specialist was the anomaly and not the rule when we expand our lens across history.

I assume these "smoke breaks with the art department" involved more than just tobacco.... :D