Is it possible to become 'excellent' at both design and coding?

Of course, if it only comes to design in the pure CSS or graphics way that works, but everything that gets to HTML is different.

It's really hard to consider HTML(5) (that one spec, as compared to other modules) a pure markup language any longer. Of course you can use it like that, but than you won't use a lot of features.

So in other words. You have to become both or else you will end up very far from being excellent.

I also think that's even a bit of a problem. I always thought it was good to look at web design and development in separate ways, but in many cases you will end up using the tools that would fit. On the other hand that thing is also kinda true for being an administrator or developer in a way. You can get out much more if you have experience in both fields.

But hey, that's what happens when you work on computer stuff (or computer science if you want, but it often isn't). You have lots of pieces and levels of abstraction working together.

Also isn't it the best to not focus on what you learn, but just have a look what you find interesting? If it's interesting you will focus on it, learn and work quicker and you'll know what to look out for when you need a job.

Oh and people often switch to other languages and learn completely new things, doing completely different things and become excellent. It's not like these things are too distant from each other. So I guess it will work.

Okay, now instead of philosophy an answer to your question.

> Are there any examples of 'generalists' who have built and/or led successful startups?

DuckDuckGo I think. Administrator (FreeBSD and various servers), developer (Perl) and of course the website, which I as a user actually love a lot, even if someone who actually knows about design maybe would disagree.

I don't aspire to ever be a really good designer, but I'm doing exactly this right now. It's become clear to me over the last year that improving the design of my apps is going to do more to boost sales than any new features I might add.

The real concern is that your colleague who is also a "good" programmer currently and focuses on that one task will be a able to present himself as an "expert" programmer in 10 years time (or at least as someone with considerable experience, for what it's worth) whether or not his actual skill set has improved much.

There's also Economics at work: companies tend to adopt a division of labour between specialised roles as it is far more difficult to hire someone with multiple skill sets. One person with two (relevant) skills usually costs more than two people with one skill. This means that a companies' money goes much further when they hire single-skill workers and scale the company to the point where each worker has a full-time job.

This rule doesn't it apply when dealing with small companies (especially startups) which may require individual employees to adopt multiple roles, perhaps informally. Nor does it apply when multi-skill workers are essential or significantly higher-performing: e.g. presenters of physics tv programmes tend to be both good physicists and good public speakers.

In summary: 1) mostly 2) no, but people will pigeon-hole you anyway *) yes, you have to be - this is where multiple skills may really give you an edge.

But I think there's even bigger advantage to your talent because:

- you can create a good looking and working product from scratch and launch it all by yourself

- when your product takes off and it's time to hire more programmers and designers you will be able to pick good ones since you are both.