My friend is a back-end programmer, specializing in the GO language. Twenty years ago programmers were programmers, writing scripts, knowing all the programming languages (there were only a couple). Nowadays they don’t even write codes anymore. They use a vast library to assemble a piece of working software.

In the Stone Age people were multitalented. Everybody knew how to make a spear and fire, which berry and mushroom is poisonous and where to find water. With the advent of agriculture professions were born. There were farmers, herders, blacksmiths and potters. Then came the teachers, priests and soldiers.

There were teachers in the past, knowing and teaching everything. Then maths teachers. Then maths teachers specialized in secondary school. Then secondary math teachers specialized in talent management. And it will go on and on. I tried to find out how many occupations there are at the present, but it is impossible. I found a list of over 12 thousand careers. Specialization is speeding up. I guess we will end up with hundreds of thousands of occupations soon.

As the common knowledge expands, it is impossible to know everything. We all know only a tiny little segment of our field. We are all gear wheels in the machine of our society. Every gear knows well what to do in its domain so that the great machine works smoothly.

Obviously we can’t specialize to this degree at school, even at colleges. We have to top up our knowledge in two ways: doing micro courses or just keeping up with literature in our field.