Re: "Specialization is for insects" - Heinlen

["Mario Santana" <msantana () terremark com>]

I've just done a lot of thinking about specialization vs. resilience.  I
agree with your notes, so far as they go.  Heinlein was talking about
human beings, and you seem to agree with him on that point.  You're
adding another good point: a given tool should do one thing, and do it
well.  So maybe specialization is for tools.

The resilience and adaptability of generalists comes from
diversification. Generalists can combine and adapt a wide range of
skills to deal with new or unexpected situations.  But only human
generalists can do this well.  So far, attempts at building software
generalists have failed.

There is a type of generalization that works well for tools, though.
Think about Kernighan's "The Practice of Programming," where he
advocates generality in programs as one of his three core concepts of
good coding.  (Simplicity and clarity are the other two.)  He's not
talking about coding a tool that's all things to all people.  Instead,
he's saying that by not making assumptions about how this tool will be
used, and especially by making it easy to provide input and read output
from this tool, you can code a specialist program that's useful in a
wide variety of unexpected situations.

So yeah, generalist humans combine powerfully with specialized tools.

In the end, though, deep down... I think we're generalists because we
like it.  Generalists are most valuable in the flux and chaos of
unexpected changes: where basic assumptions aren't met, fool-proof
methods aren't working, and nobody knows even what questions to ask.
That's when things get interesting.  We're generalists because that's
what it takes to be in the middle of it.

Cheers!
Mario D. Santana, CISSP, CISA, GCWN, GREM, RHCT
IT Security Specialist

----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:18:31 -0400
From: Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com>
Subject: [Dailydave] "Specialization is for insects" - Heinlen

It's interesting the tension between generalism and specialism in 
information security. For example, we hire consultants who are 
generalists. [...]

But when it comes to technology, I think it's valuable to specialize. 
[...]

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