a person competent in several different fields or activities.
Renaissance Man, polymath, generalist, all terms roughly meaning the same thing.
Growing up in the UK and knowing I wanted nothing more than to be a software engineer, I kept wishing the clock would hurry up and I would move onward through the academic pipeline which constricts every step. At GCSE you chose a basket of courses, dumping one or two you didn’t like, then at A-level you pick four from that, and on to university where you are down to one.
I used to think that was amazing, and we should allow kids to go down to one domain if they knew which one they wanted at a way earlier stage. But this has shifted as I’ve gotten older, and I’ve found a deeper understanding of myself. What I loved about programming is the ability to build anything I could dream up. If one week I was interested in how trains worked, I could build a simulation of a network of signals. Now I’m older, I realise that love is of general enquiry. After this realisation, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. What I thought was a perk of the UK education system actually limited myself from appreciating this sooner. Compared to France and the U.S. as two examples I know of specifically, keeping that generalist door open may foster people figuring out links between industries and concepts more so than in the UK.
Alas, I was a bulshy kid and no amount of talking about renaissance men would get me to remember dates of historic events in a stuffy upper floor classroom.