So true. For me it has become RegEx, Email, Email Servers/security, Excel, and sorting. Never thought I'd go on about it, but man. It apparently is my niche.
Thanks. It's the same for me, actually - I built a lot of my career around XML and other W3C standards and the great thing about those, while complicated is that you can refer to a well defined spec to see what the behaviour SHOULD be.
But I'm hoping it's not either/or question - I can continue learning software architecture patterns and anti-pattern but perhaps there is some new, realtively untapped market or end-user experience where this can be leveraged.