Clemens Vasters writes a post about something many of us are experiencing, being overwhelmed by so much new developer technology coming out of Microsoft. Visual Studio is jam packed with new features and there is Indigo, Avalon, Vista and more coming down the pipe. I have vented my own frustration with some posts called "Keeping up with the Joneses" 1, 2 and 3. Clemens discusses the issue and the impact on his work more eloquently.
This problem isn't totally new though. I think by the early 90's I was starting to worry about continuing to try to work alone. Software was getting too big, the tools were getting to be too many and the hardware was becoming a blur. This becomes painfully obvious when family or friends calls to get advice on what computer to buy or how to deal with a hard drive crash. I can no longer help them. It's not what I know.
Like Clemens, I am a generalist. But unlike Clemens, I am still earning the bulk of my income as an independent contractor with end to end responsibility for the projects that I take on - from analysis, to design, to coding, to deployment and support.
The scope of what is coming around the bend is frightening... fascinating and exciting, but frightening.
Having just received a call for presentation abstracts for a conference that will not be until next spring, I realized that I have, as of late, so narrowly focused on a few technologies in .NET 2.0 - such as ADO.NET 2.0 and WSE 3.0 - that I don't have the usual grab bag of fascinating real life lessons (with VS2005) to draw on as fodder for session topics.
So what of the independents? Is it time to give it up and build teams? Time to pick something to become so expert on that you will be the go-to person for that technology?
Personally, I think I will just keep at it. For as long as I can keep up the pace, my interests and needs will continue to drive me to eventually learn what it is that I need to know. Sure, I hadn't really ever considered Sharepoint to be on my radar, but my client forced the issue this summer and I had to buckle down. Hopefully, they will have a project idea that will have Avalon written all over it someday soon. But in the meantime, I am getting way too knowledgeable about Query Notifications, happily immured in WSE 3.0 and ready to buckle down with Indigo. Not to mention, Ink on the Web, Virtual Earth, etc etc...
Though none of these are on the list of Clemens predictions (at the end of his post) for areas of expertise that will soon be in demand.