The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. – Arthur Schopenhauer

There have been some recent discussions on my radar around knowing your fundamentals versus knowing how to operate certain tools/software/etc. like an expert.
This drove me back to my experiences with programming in high school and what I later found out about networking/technology in general.

When I first learned a programming language (BASIC and later on PASCAL/Delphi) I had sometimes problems to grasp what certain things I typed into the source code file really meant. And to be honest – I still have my problems when it comes to object-oriented programming and concepts related to this.
But then I started working on a private project with PHP and thought it would be fun to learn some C++ – and suddenly I realized:
“In some way this is all the same!”
Well – I later learned, that it is all rooted in the same concepts and methodologies and only the implementation in a certain language differs (but even those lines are blurry for a majority of programming languages) – So I had this moment, where it made “click” and from that day, I really don’t had any problems with programming anymore.

Of course I’m not a programmer nowadays and I don’t want to become one either – it is simply not for me – but fairly recently I had a similar experience to what I just described above:

When I had my first sysadmin/network admin job I was all about getting into the CLI and the nerd knobs – there was nothing else and I pictured myself as the guy who would become an expert in the tools I had at my disposal. But the more I learned about the standards and protocols – the fundamentals – behind all this, the more I realized:
“This is somehow the same as the programming thing”
– and this drove me into the direction of getting more into the fundamentals and ultimately into design/architecture and how it all relates to business.

So the question that remains is: What is more important? Fundamentals or knowing how specific tools work?

My answer is: Both.

For some people it can be the same as for me:
From specific to more general (and in that way being able to apply something you learned in the past to the new shiny toy). Learning how to operate a specific product/technology can help understand how the underlying concept was meant to work, after all.

For others it will be sticking with the tools and relearning them again and again in a way, when there are updates and replacements – which is OK, too. Because those people know the tiny bits and problems you could have with this device/tool/software/etc – and this knowledge is needed to in todays complex technology landscape, too.

In the end, everyone has to find out, what’s most interesting for his/her own development and as a daily (work) driver.

If you are more interested in the topic and what other, more smart people than myself think about this, I recommend you check out these two podcast episodes:

Heavy Networking Episode 502 from the PacketPushers:

Heavy Networking 502: Get Off My VLAN! Old Network Engineers On What New Engineers Should Know

and

The Hedge Episode 30:

The Hedge Podcast 30: Ethan Banks and Network Fundamentals

And feel free to hit me up in the comments or on Twitter / LinkedIn if you want to share your own thoughts on this with me.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic. – Arthur C. Clarke 

So every person that can handle todays complex technology or IT systems is some kind of magician – right? Maybe – but to me the golden answer related to everything IT is always:

It depends.

This is of course not a good answer – it is maybe the worst answer one can give to any question. But it shows the complexity and always-changing nature of our modern, technology-driven world.
And I find all of this intimidating – It opens up seemingly infinite possibilities for any individual that wants to work in a technology or IT-related field and therefore adds a lot of complex questions:

What do I focus on?

What specialization should I focus upon to secure a good or even high paying job for the next couple of years?

How do I stay ahead of the developments in my industry that seem to change how everything works by the minute?

There are a lot more questions like these that come to my mind, but I think they reflect some of the fears many people that start a career in technology/IT have today.

So how does somebody tackle all this? – I dare not say I have the ultimate solution but I can say, what worked for me so far and has kept me on the ground throughout my personal career.

1. You can’t know everything – don’t let your mindset go into the direction, many people now call “imposter syndrome” – you are not an imposter. Nobody knows everything – everyone just knows things to a certain point and has to figure out the rest along the way. That is the fun in complex engineered systems – at least to me.
   
2. Specialize in what interests you, but don’t let it be everything you know. In a constant changing field you always need to be open to learn new things – but you also can’t forget the fundamentals. So I think a good mix in specializing in what interests you and keeping an open mind to other or adjacent fields in general is what makes a good technologist. And don’t be afraid at some point to drop the specialization in favor of a new focus area – it only adds to you personal toolkit and knowledge.
   
3. Never stop asking questions – Questions can be quite powerful..
   How does this work? Why does it need to work this way? (Maybe there is a better or more efficient way) Why do I want to learn this new skill?
   You don’t always need to know the answers – but finding them is what drives me always forward.

So what is a Technologist? To me, simply put, a Technologist is a person, that always wants to figure out how things work and how to improve them, never stops learning (to a certain degree) and never stops asking questions.
And the results that other see from this mindset sometimes maybe seem like a magic trick.