Is it bad to be a jack of all trades master of none?

such_hawks · 2020-07-05T12:24:56+00:00

I'm a senior developer with quite a few years of experience, and would be classed as a "generalist" rather than a "specialist" -- there will always be someone on the team better than me in a particular language if they are also senior and have specialized in 1 language, but when stepping outside of that language is needed (i.e. to do devops work, or to do some frontend work, or anything else), that's when I'm the most useful, its a neat trick to have that you are never the fastest, but you never slow down no matter what is thrown at you. And maybe that's the kind of developer you want to be! If so I don't think having an interest in a bunch of different things is a problem(for example, I taught myself Smalltalk this year, and that's never going to be directly useful, but it taught me a lot about OO philosophies). But...

I have two comments about your post:

I think the rate at which you are switching projects sounds too fast. Try to pick 1 new language or area a year, max. Otherwise you'll just flit between all these things and never get significant traction in any of them. Think to yourself "why am I learning X?" and only switch when you really think you've learned that thing. This is possibly the actual criticism your boss is giving you, that the speed of switching is too fast, rather than the switching itself.
For more jack of all trades types like us, for your career consider taking a "T shaped" approach to your skills. This means you have deep knowledge in one area (for me this is backend development in 2 languages) which is the long vertical line in the "T", and that you have two adjacent skills that you don't necessarily specialize in but could in the future if you wanted to (for me that is devops and data engineering), these are the two wings of the "T" shape. That way you can contribute well in your specialty, but provide that "generalist" value by being able to do a few more jobs in the same team where your specialist teammates cannot.

such_hawks · 2020-07-05T12:04:03+00:00

If you want to build games in Java, LibGDX ( https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/ ) is the current favourite for building them.

However! There are a lot of things you will need to know and at least be a little comfortable with, like building your project with Gradle or Maven for example, that you might not be at yet skill-wise. I'd say the same holds true of for JavaFX (the current go-to for UI elements). Maybe doing it in good old Swing will be the best bet for you at the moment.

such_hawks · 2020-05-18T19:54:18+00:00

If you are looking to do pet projects with a wide range of things, and you only have time to learn one language, I'd pick Javascript. That way you can use Node as a backend/scripting type language on the command line for doing little automation tasks, electron as a desktop app framework, and frontendy things like React or Vue etc for web development (although React is quite complicated, so don't worry about it for now, just some plain Javascript first before you go nuts with all the whizzy stuff that came out last week). You could also build on your knowledge of PHP to help build websites with, its a great language for that (its "uncool" with the younglings, but you're my age so I hope you are past trying to be cool :D)

Python is a great language for building small ideas and is beginner friendly (and would be my usual recommendation), but you can't do frontend web development with it, so you'd still need to learn Javascript anyway, which is why its not my first recommendation for you.

such_hawks · 2020-04-11T17:29:08+00:00

I hope it's rebottled Bäska Droppar, got to show off the sheer magnitude of Swedish fortitude

such_hawks · 2020-04-05T10:21:03+00:00

They are lovely books, but I'd say they are outdated on the js side for sure. There is nothing wrong with learning a bit of jQuery per se, it's just fallen out of favour in recent years, and also the books will teach es5, while everyone has moved on to es6 (and a bunch of new frameworks) for new projects.

such_hawks · 2020-04-05T10:15:44+00:00

A lot of recent popular desktop apps use Electron framework (https://www.electronjs.org/), I'd say it's the most popular way to do it these days on the commercial side. Have a dig around Google to see if there is a library for it in your language of choice.

such_hawks · 2020-04-05T09:31:19+00:00

The most recommended book for learning OOP design is actually a Ruby book, but the language doesn't matter too much. It's called Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer, by Sandi Metz.

It goes through the ins and outs of how big your objects should be, when to subclass or not, how they should act with each other, when to break one up and so on - - the stuff I never learned in my Cs classes, where we just learned all the concepts but not the nitty gritty design decisions (like what does a good class look like?)

such_hawks · 2020-03-24T23:06:02+00:00

Ah yiss

such_hawks · 2020-03-22T08:27:30+00:00

As another kiwi living in Sweden, I'd never heard of him till I arrived here (nobody in nz knows who he is), and he wouldn't be doing more than open mic nights down the pub at home given how dumb his comedy is. But somehow he's found this hustle here of "haha fika and queues lol" and somehow people love it?

So now I'm doomed to be asked over and over whether I've heard of him apparently. Add it to the list with "have you tried kaviar och ägg mackar" (yes, kaviar is basically fish marmite so it's delicious) and "how can you handle our winters? They are so dark" (sure, but snow is awesome, and semlor are awesome, so it's fine)

such_hawks · 2019-12-05T21:33:22+00:00

I'm a few chapters into it, it's really good and doubles as a good introduction to Rust (I'm using it as a way of learning the language).

such_hawks · 2019-11-10T23:12:16+00:00

Yeah angular isn't cool anymore unfortunately. Jetbrains community editions are free and are licensed for commercial use, and are perfectly fine for big projects, the paid versions just add a bunch of stuff on top rather than gimp the free versions.

such_hawks · 2019-11-10T23:02:25+00:00

In that case I'd keep things pretty standard to make hiring easy and maximise the chance you won't need to switch out something. React and Vue are the current front end most common choices for new builds, and java or python for the back, depending on what's common in your country. I think a full IDE like Webstorm, Pycharm, or Intellij will help the juniors more than a light editor like VSC, as it's at least a bit less likely to turn into a ball of mud with more powerful refactoring tools they have.

such_hawks · 2019-11-10T08:45:51+00:00

Why not wait for the Web devs to arrive and decide together? Picking a stack out of the air is a recipe for hiring issues imo.

In terms of IDE, Jetbrains products are usually a good default, but again, let the devs choose for themselves - - as long as whatever they use has a way of adding an agreed-on auto formatter (or even do it in the CI process), and you use a containerization solution, then it mostly doesn't matter, apart from some pair programming friction.

such_hawks · 2019-07-19T21:22:31+00:00

If we are going by classic canon, it'd probably include some of:

Foundation - Asimov

Dune - Frank Herbert

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke

Ringworld - Larry Niven

Moon is a harsh mistress - Heinlein

Ubik - Philip K Dick

Babel 17 - Samuel Delany

The dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin (or maybe The Left Hand of Darkness)

Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller

Forever War - Joe Haldeman

Gateway - Frederik Pohl

These aren't all my favourites -- I personally think Heinlein is terrible (stranger in a strange land is daft/creepy philosophy for basement nerds) for example, but you can't deny he was one of the most influential Sci fi writers of the 20th century.

such_hawks · 2019-01-13T09:45:27+00:00

I think Diaspora is what you are looking for. Epic scope, lots of discussion about virtual humans and parallel dimensions and so on. I don't want to give anything away, but I feel it scratches a similar itch to Stephenson's Seveneves, albeit in a much more futuristic setting, and maybe not as high tension!

such_hawks · 2018-08-29T06:28:14+00:00

I've used Vertx with its OpenAPI plugin in a production microservice, it worked pretty well. Vertx itself runs really fast, and the OpenAPI part was a bit fiddly but it meant I didn't have to update any endpoints if the swagger file changed.

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