I think when you tell us that’s all about context, we may have a look also over “epistemology” and “complexity theory”.

Calling someone a specialist or a generalist doesn’t mean so much, I also believe.

We are all part of related systems, data, processes, people… All have direct or indirect influence over the others…

It may sound strange or superficial, but I prefer the sense of WISDOM.
Think about an elder Martial Arts master…

Well, it´s a bit subjective or personal.
But what isn’t that way, when we talk about people comparing to people?
Just a matter of accepting that FACT…

By WISDOM I mean, how much knowledge, experiences and emotions one person had contact in life, and how intensely and “bravely” this person extract learned lessons from both.

It´s about bad and good experiences, bad and good knowledge acquired, and finally all the sense of what is bad (anti-value) and what is good (valuable stuff), now according to context…

And it’s not so far a complete vision… never will be…

Big Hug!!! ;)

– Scott

I happen to work out of ThoughtWorks Studios in Bangalore.
I am “primarily a C++ programmer.

Here is some of my (open source) work:
1) VTK Desginer : http://www.vcreatelogic.com/oss/vtkdesigner/
2) KWebTest: http://code.google.com/p/kwebtest/

I have managed to do a lot of work with C++/Qt. I consider myself proficient in it.
I am on the Selenium team here and work primarily with JavaScript and Java.
This decision was hard for me. I wanted to continue working in the C++ language. Decided to language-agnostic and learn Java & JS and it’s been fun ( Doing that for a month now)

While I consider myself a C++ specialist; I consider myself a generalist application programmer as well.

Nice article, I’ll pass this link on to my friends.

— Manish Chakravarty, TW Studios, Bangalore