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by Teever 588 days ago
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein
2 comments
tenacious_tuna 587 days ago
This is one of my absolute favorite quotes, and I've used it as a guiding star in figuring out what I want to do with my life, but it's also reductive in a critical way: time and energy are limited, and not everyone wants to generalize.

An example I've been running into myself lately has been trying to get a portrait photography workflow running with only FOSS tech. I've been fighting with darktable and libgphoto for months (and even tried submitting patches!) and tethered shooting still doesn't work right. I could continue sinking time and energy into this, but at the end of the day I just want to shoot tethered to a laptop, a basic function of modern photo editing systems.

I had more time when I was a student for learning how new systems work, but between full time work, the admin of being an adult, maintaining various relationships--I don't have the resources I once did, and I'm content to consider solving them someone else's problem.

The reason I go to my vet is so they can "troubleshoot" my pet. I don't have the expertise to do so myself; why would I expect the reverse to be any more true?

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eternityforest 587 days ago
Some things are important, everyone should know them. Cooking is important for everyone, sadly comforting the dying eventually is too...

But priorities are also important, and some skills can only be learned by doing. Which is often unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous, and time consuming.

Some stuff has a very low chance of directly being needed. I've never written a paper check. I could probably Google how to balance accounts if I had to.

Vets should have a little more tech skill, but software should be a lot easier.

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