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The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

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Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#21

Post by aphextron »

purple-again wrote: post #7

This again. Is a doctor in his first year of being a full fledged doctor any less of a doctor than one with 20 years of experience? The more experienced doctor is almost assuredly better and preferable, but both of them are doctors. This assumption that you have to be a master of the front end and a master of the back end to be a full stack developer is flawed from the start. Have you created economic value with a co…

I don't think your analogy holds up. Theres really no such thing as just a "doctor". Everyone specializes in some field, even if that specialization is in generalization. But doctors who specialize in general cases (i.e. family practice) serve the role of passing you off to the appropriate specialist to fulfill your needs. And in the same way I would expect a highly experienced programmer to know the limits of their skillset and when to delegate tasks.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#22

Post by l5870uoo9y »

To me a full stack developer doesn't mean mastery of every technology out there or necessarily deep experience within a limited field, but a person with broad enough knowledge to independently and successfully execute a development process. This stands in contrast with the backend developer who reject any UI work – possibly out a lack of aesthetic sense.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#23

Post by notruthallowed »

mmjaa wrote: post #13

I've come to the conclusion that the only 'real' "Full Stack Developer" is one who, indeed, knows what the stack is, and how to use it. Also, the heap. Think about it - those who don't know these things, and don't care - usually gravitate around a singular technology that lets them ignore the details. Those who do know these things, and how to use them properly, usually don't have any particular focal gravity, and ar…

Kids these days angrily shakes fist

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#24

Post by _lex »

>"most “full stack” developers have not truly mastered front end and back end"

We need to do something about the default of developer bashing prevalent in our culture. There's no true Scotsman, nobody is 100% perfectly attuned to the latest developments on any surface.

Instead engineers develop along competencies that are required in their work. If you need to deep dive into a backend problem, you'll get better at that problem space. Same with frontend.

Yes there are separate stacks beneath the problem being solved, and yes there's discovery and learning as people spend years in a certain focus - but does focusing only on 1 thing mean that you've attained competency in that 1 thing? Does focusing on both the frontend and backend mean that you can't have attained competency in both?

I personally work with fullstack engineers that are better at frontend than some frontend engineers, AND better at backend than some backend engineers - so the answer here is clear to me.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#25

Post by Raphmedia »

My title is "full-stack developer". Does that means that I'm the perfect developer? That I am senior is all the technologies that I touch? No.

It simply means that I aim to learn all parts of our stack and do my best to master them. It's not a chore to me. I don't have to kick myself to keep up with design trends and programming trends. I love both of those fields and can't even imagine not keeping up with both side of the coin.

In my team there are some very senior back-end programmers. There's also some very senior front-end developers and very senior designers. Do I consider myself above them? Like some sort of unicorn rockstar? Nope. I'm simply a good support player.

I believe that a good full-stack developer is simply someone who is able to work on all parts of a project and help facilitate the communication between the different fields. This last part is the most important of all.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#26

Post by _lex »

jnordwick wrote: post #12

Why do you only ever hear about full stack developers in web developer context? I work in FinTech and trading systems - very high performance and low latency systems. I deal with databases and huge amounts of data too. And I've (as well as coworkers) have hacked together trading GUIs and simple CGI to throw together data visualizations. But none of us would ever call ourselves full-stack and we'd never hire a front-e…

Especially on teams where you deliver a lot of product quickly, it can be easy to develop and maintain both skillsets.

You hear about it in the web developer context (and especially not in finance) because they tend to have quicker iterative cycles, and therefore may be doing quite a bit more coding. There may also be a cost, corporate maturity and scale component as well. ( At scale, you want to depend on fewer exceptional people, and many more average people, doing average things. Fullstack is still seen as exceptional, and its hard to scale exceptional).

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#28

Post by Fifer82 »

jnordwick wrote: post #12

Why do you only ever hear about full stack developers in web developer context? I work in FinTech and trading systems - very high performance and low latency systems. I deal with databases and huge amounts of data too. And I've (as well as coworkers) have hacked together trading GUIs and simple CGI to throw together data visualizations. But none of us would ever call ourselves full-stack and we'd never hire a front-e…

Companies (not the big SF ones) are seeing the complexities of web development multiply and don't want to pretend any different. A full stack developer just does everything they used to pay someone to do half of without much of the salary increase.

There will be people like me who are the sole developer at a small company, but my job role is simply "do all the stuffs". They will claim they are full stack developers too. The same way I am my own Creative Technology Officer, Project Manager, QA....

I just steer away from the bullshit titles that companies generally use to devalue your skill set.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#29

Post by lanstin »

hairysc wrote: post #18

uh... i thought i am a full stack dev... there's something above tcp/ip?

Every time I hear someone say they are a full stack developer I start to assume they have opinions on ARP and Ethernet drivers and CPU microcode and consensus algorithms and good caching strategies and font design and UX. Possibly some semiconductor physics and literate writing skills. Sadly it seems to mean something else.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#30

Post by killjavascript »

Is there only JS frontend these days? No

Most frontend is light work except for JavaScript. Can someone please kill this ugly monster? A few years ago, one wouldn't call themselve a developer if all he/she could is string together a UI. Javascript took us backwards. UI should be the simpliest part of putting together an app.

Also, People are still writing server side html wpf, winforms, java, android, ios front ends. So people should stop assuming frontend is only JavaScript.

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