One of my colleagues, a Java expert, complained about the field of knowledge one has to cover today to be an expert. My reflection is that one has to limit oneself to a certain way of doing things (e.g. the Zope way, The Macintosh way, The EJB way).

Actually, I don't think this is necessarily true. If you're just starting out (and I'm not saying you are, just stating a point) then it seems that way. But many languages in wide use today are similar enough to one another that the same patterns make sense no matter which one you pick. Of course there are differences, but if you think about problems (and frameworks) in a design fashion then there are many deep similarities that you can carry from language to language, project to project.

For instance, my day job is almost entirely Java. While we're using a particular application method with servlets I'm curious about other ones and was reading some of the higher-level documentation for Struts on my way home from work this evening. (I also am in idea-acquisition mode for the next version of OpenInteract, but don't let that leak :-) Some pieces of the framework are almost exactly the same -- they have different names, interfaces, but the meaning and motivation are alike. Many apps like this are guided by MVC ideas and principles that transcend languages.

Chris
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