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The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

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Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#41

Post by Raphmedia »

tyurok wrote: post #10

"Full stack developer" is just a new word for "programmer". "Programmer" could be a role for any part of the stack, you just have to solve the problem in hand and you're good. If you're good or not, specialist or generalist, that's another discussion.

It would depend on who you ask but I consider that to be truly full-stack you need to be able to work on the UI/UX and design. With that distinction, full-stack isn't a new word for programmer.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#42

Post by lanstin »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #32

I used to be a full-stack developer, back when the front-end was jQuery. Once the JavaScript community started going insane with new front-end frameworks every two weeks, and none of the companies I was interviewing with used jQuery anymore, I decided to only be a backend engineer. I don't like working with JavaScript anyway.

I can cobble together a jquery UI for a dataviz using D3 but I hate people and their cussedness. When any one complains about color or fonts I just make it black and white in Courier.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#45

Post by dc2 »

I've been developing for 10 years. I have never had a team, so I have had to build each stack from scratch, myself, including the research and decision making of each tool to use in the stack.

I've put together about 4 generations of systems in this time, each with entirely fresh stacks. The first was pre-build-tools, so I had to write my own module loaders and bundlers from scratch.

The latest web stack uses containerized deployment in a micro service architecture, sql, nosql, rest, graphql, a jwt-based authentication gateway and a modern front end stack.

Do I qualify as a full stack dev?

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#46

Post by squarefoot »

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…

the analogy with doctors although valid on principle doesn't take into account that you can rewrite buggy code due to inexperience, but you can't undo a brain surgery gone bad.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#47

Post by polote »

> Depending on the scale of technologies in question, one could even argue that true mastery of both frontend and backend is impossible.

lol saying that is equivalent to say that mastering frontend OR backend is also impossible.

The reason of that is the term mastery. Mastery, probably doesn't exist, or at least doesn't mean anything.

Useless article

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#48

Post by lr4444lr »

quakenul wrote: post #36
aphextron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So how doesn't it hold up? In no way did OP suggest that you need to be able to do everything on any conceivable project by yourself. There could be plenty things that are outside the scope of any given Full Stack Developer. How would that invalidate all the times when they were not?

Maybe he meant, for example, that a 1st year cardiologist is probably going to be a better cardiologist than a 20 year nephrologist. The OP seems to be insinuating in his medical analogy that only time - not specialty - is the most important metric. Take that 20 year nephrologist: if he had spent 10 of those years in cardiology, I don't think most other nephrologists would say that makes him a better doctor just because his experience was more balanced across two fields. In fact, I think they'd say he was a lesser doctor than one who devoted the 20 years to one subspecialty.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#49

Post by bryanlarsen »

I can and have contributed to and/or written bootloaders and kernel drivers and web servers as well as all the other stuff people generally consider part of the the full stack. Does this make me even more "full-stack"?

Nah, it just means that, like every other experienced developer, I've got a "paint drip"[1] distribution of skills. My drip is just a little wider than other full stack developers, but the # and depth of those drips is probably comparable.

And that's what full stack means: you have exposure to the entire range of skills necessary to do front and back end, and are expert in more than one of those skills. But you aren't an expert in all of them, because nobody is.

1: https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip-people/1...

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