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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

I don't think your analogy holds up. Theres really no such thing as just a "doctor". Everyone specializes in some field, even if that specialization is in generalization. But doctors who specialize in general cases (i.e. family practice) serve the role of passing you off to the appropriate specialist to fulfill your needs. And in the same way I would expect a highly experienced programmer to know the limits of their skillset and when to delegate tasks.

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I can attest that there is a such thing as a doctor. I saw one just a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure she specializes in family practice, but she is a doctor none the less. And she'd probably be be very confused if I told her she didn't exist, or she wasn't a doctor because doctors don't exist.

But she wouldn't be confused if you said she wasn't a heart surgeon, because she's not. She can tell you a bunch of stuff about the heart, she can probably do surgery if she was in a position where she had to, but she's not a heart surgeon and wouldn't claim to be.

So how doesn't it hold up? In no way did OP suggest that you need to be able to do everything on any conceivable project by yourself. There could be plenty things that are outside the scope of any given Full Stack Developer. How would that invalidate all the times when they were not?

Maybe he meant, for example, that a 1st year cardiologist is probably going to be a better cardiologist than a 20 year nephrologist. The OP seems to be insinuating in his medical analogy that only time - not specialty - is the most important metric. Take that 20 year nephrologist: if he had spent 10 of those years in cardiology, I don't think most other nephrologists would say that makes him a better doctor just because his experience was more balanced across two fields. In fact, I think they'd say he was a lesser doctor than one who devoted the 20 years to one subspecialty.

Lesser doctor or lesser nephrologist? Semantics are very important in these sorts of discussions.

Lesser doctor. That was my point: it is my understanding that covering a wider but shallower expertise in medicine would not elevate a doctor among his peers as much as a doctor who plumbs the depth of one specialty (barring one of the well-recognized interdisciplinary field like sleep medicine).

Specialization is for insects.

Being an insect doesn't seem like such a bad thing[1]

1. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/19731/20141108/insects-are...

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