[dkuntz2]

I think the emphasis on containment and local understanding is good, especially considering that programs are getting huge (which is a separate problem, and what I think really needs to get fixed). With huge programs it's infeasible to fully comprehend the whole program, which means the only thing you can really do is hope that other programmers' functions work as advertised, and focus on perfecting your local domain.

The easiest way to alleviate this, in my opinion, is to focus on building smaller programs which focus on doing one thing well, and combining those together to create larger applications, with preferably a minimum of glue code. In my mind this leads to even more containment as each domain is now accessible only through the specified API.

This could lead to similar problems that you have with the deemphasis of global understanding, because it's still compartmentalizing things, and at each higher level the programmer is just trusting that the lower levels have implemented what they said they would, just like in a huge, single program.

The idea of being T-shaped specifically when it comes to the overall knowledge of the projects you work on seems to be the best way to work on those applications: have a general understanding of the whole project, and a really good understanding of your specific domain (and perhaps an intermediate understanding of those around yours).