Specialization is for recruiters, not developers

In his blog, Matt Mullenweg (in case his name does not ring a bell, he is the co-founder of WordPress), reminds us of this great quote by Peter Merel:

A programmer should be able to fix a bug, market an application, maintain a legacy, lead a team, design an architecture, hack a kernel, schedule a project, craft a class, route a network, give a reference, take orders, give orders, use configuration management, prototype, apply patterns, innovate, write documentation, support users, create a cool web-site, email efficiently, resign smoothly. Specialization is for recruiters.

We could give arguments both to support and reject his statement (you’re more than welcome to share yours in the comments below) but just to give my 2 cents on this:

• This is absolutely true when you´re part of a small startup. Specialization is a luxury you can’t afford
• Not everybody can be a specialist (or a generalist, for that matter). To be a specialist you need a certain attitude and personal skills, for instance, attention to detail, that not everybody has (e.g. myself).

There´s room for both types of developers just make sure you choose the right profile for you!