I've just finished to read the Mike Gunderloy's article about VB
growing and specialization and I've to see that it reflects a lot my point
of view: it's the time to be more specialized. Mike talks with the point of view
of a VB developer but his considerations are extendible to all developers.
For the next years, lots of new innvovations are waiting us and we've to be
ready. New technology will be ready (a new data model with SQL Server 2005,
LINQ, Atlas, Windows Presentation Foundation, Indigo etc.) and building a
complex application will be always more complex, also because a key part
for future applications is the integration with other platform (I'm thinking
about integration with Sharepoint, BizTalk, ERPs etc.).
So, can a developer be specialized on all these fields? Mike thinks that it's
impossible and we must be specialized on a single field of these tecnologies
(there's the expert on the data management and database, the expert on the user
interface, the expert on the web tecnology etc.).
I don't think that we must to be extremely specialized only on a field, but
that we need to know everything at a level that permits us to understand
and solve problems and to do the right choice at the right time. However, I
agree that in the future building a complex application will always more a mix
of knowledges and working closely on a "sector" of the application could be
the right choice. On big projects, be ready to be specialized on a part of the
application development: we'll have the team that work with the user
interface, the team that work with the database, the time that work on web
services, the team that works on integrations etc.
This is not a news because also today if you work on a large team this is the
standard way to do, but for the future I agree with Mark: specialization will be
more "pumped up"! 