Renaissance Man
Do modern people specialize in too little or too much? I often find myself quietly judging every person I meet on whether they are skilled in what they do. I am not simply talking about their vocation. Rather, I mean whether they speak clearly and concisely, whether they can hold an interesting conversation, whether they can perform tasks around their home, whether they can speak intelligently about several unrelated topics, and the like. I always find it disappointing when I meet someone who may be a better developer than me cannot replace a wall socket, or does not know the first thing about how an induction motor operates. I often wonder if this is simply how people are formally taught; do they have no interest to grow outside of their specialized field?
I have always enjoyed learning. From a young age I was always taking things apart to better understand how they worked. With a knack for science and math and that inquisitive nature, I found myself becoming interested in subjects that were tangential, or completely unrelated, to software. I learned to sing and play the piano, though not simultaneously, from a young age. I obviously played video games a lot, though I also dabbled in tabletop games such as Chinese checkers and chess. We lived in a house half a block from the big park in town, so one year I decided to become an entrepreneur and build a functioning vending machine that passersby could put coins into and receive a can of soda - this did not work as I was young and couldn't get the coins to distinguish themselves in a way that I could check them programmatically, but my design probably would have worked if I tried it out today and had a RaspberryPI or similar to program.
I also like to read. This is the basis from which this post sprang. I was driving my family back from a vacation and talking with my wife about how strange it is to find people who proudly declare that they do not enjoy reading. I have had too many, in my opinion, conversations wherein I say "Oh, I'm reading [some book]" and the response is literally "Oh, I don't read." This seems so alien to me. You don't read? Like at all? You only read books because your schooling forced you to? You haven't found a single book which sparked enjoyment purely from its story?
This is usually a dead giveaway that the person will be one of those types I mentioned earlier who do one thing really well and basically nothing else. It feels, to me at least, like most of the people I meet are "min-maxing" their skill attributes like in an RPG. Like, if they take 3-4 points out of charisma, they can put 1 more point into this specific niche of intelligence. What they usually end up as is that person who has maximized their knowledge in that one thing as far as they can, and they are not genius-level either - most of us simply are not and never will be, and then end up neglecting everything else that can be done in life.
I don't want to spend too much time on the RPG-esque attribute points at the moment, though I suspect I will write something about it in the future because I think it is a fascinating way to think about personal makeup, but I do try to feel like I am always 'balancing my stats' so to speak. I am 6'6" tall, have always been above-average physical strength among non-athletes, and because I played a lot of basketball in my younger days I became relatively quick for that big frame (though, as I am much older now that has slowed down quite a bit). I have been in software for decades and basically do CTO-level work professionally (and programmer work personally). I love to cook. I play chess, though not in tournaments; I am about 1900-strength according to chess.com.
Now that I reread everything that I have written, it comes off as a bunch of bragging. However, I think rather than suggesting that I am of abundant qualities, I find it strange to encounter people who do not attempt the same. Nothing is stopping a person from borrowing a book from the library aside from time and the want to do so. Nothing, really, is keeping people from learning about skills outside of their own if nothing else but to be able to speak about them intellectually. Before I ever resort to hiring a professional to do some task, I try and learn as much as I can about it beforehand and see if I can accomplish it myself - this is why I am basically an amateur plumber and have not had to call one for 20 years.
The other side of that coin are the people who impress me most. People who look a challenge outside of their specialty in the face and say "I can do this" with full breath. It is not as if they already know how; often they learn a lot along that path and it is challenging and frustrating, but at the end they have a new skill that they can do with non-zero confidence that they will succeed. These people are truly interesting to me.
