Generalism

Wouter writes a loving elegy to generalism, terrain I’ve been foraging through my entire life.

My stock self-description is “Writer • Printer • Developer,” a variation of what Wouter references as the “Slasher” (although, by using a dot instead of slashes or commas, I attempt to avoid a ranking).

I’ve earned my living for the last 40 years as a coder, but my zone of genius is not in the writing of code, but in lateral thinking. I love making connections, transferring knowledge learned in one domain to another, introducing people who would never otherwise meet. Perhaps the best description of what I do for a living (and what I do for living too), is I ask questions.

I am, in other words, very much a generalist.