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The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

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Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#51

Post by samastur »

squarefoot wrote: post #46
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.

So? You can't undelete files that were not backed up either. Some mistakes are reversible while others aren't.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#52

Post by xj9 »

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…

> millennial developers

somebody is racist! then again, your comment really doesn't affect me. i'm millennial and i build web applications for a living. i also hack on operating systems and hardware in my spare time. a lot of my peers do the same. it really doesn't have anything to do with the generation you belong to. some people are shit developers some actually care about the craft.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#53

Post by wyldfire »

> “Only an individual who has had exposure to and experience in each of the elements of a stack can truly call themselves a full stack developer.”

This term has always struck me as pretty nebulous. Where does it end? Do I have to have written an ISR, or a bootloader? Probably not, but the term "full stack developer" is unqualified, so how can I tell? No doubt this term is very context-sensitive. "Please guess what this means from what software you can tell our business is probably based on."

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#54

Post by _lex »

dc2 wrote: post #45

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 contain…

You don't need anyone else's signoff to consider yourself for any role. By default, you're the most powerful person in your life, but when you allow other people to tell you what you are, you wind up giving away some of your power. This is particularly true in interviews, where another person who doesn't know you is judging you based on a sliver of who you really are. Your job is to define what you want, then show the sliver that aligns with what the world expects from you.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#55

Post by blackkettle »

> On the other hand, if you’re working in an agency/consultancy where it’s important for security/reliability/maintainability reasons to keep up to date with various areas of front end tooling, database types, AI, serverless, etc, then the answer veers closer to ‘never’.

Well I mean, the fact that they mention AI in the same breath and as though it entails the same scope as frontend tooling seems a bit absurd. People with PhDs in 'AI' spend much of their professional lives keeping up-to-date with a very narrow subfield: "keyword-spotting for automatic speech recognition".

The idea that a 'full stack' developer somehow even encompasses that certainly takes it to the realm of complete fantasy.

But "competent to be usefully productive across the development spectrum", is surely possible.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#56

Post by treehau5 »

aphextron wrote: post #21
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…

Specialization is for insects.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#58

Post by thegayngler »

Have to agree with the article somewhat. Its very difficult to be great at every part of the stack. Big companies require this as their applications last longer than the usual startups. Backend developers think they are full stack if they can throw HTML and JavaScript on the page. The current state of things is that the front end of things is way more complex and having to consider user interactions ends up being as hard as throwing crud together.

On the other side of things, I know Frontend developers who wouldn't dare touch the backend for any reason. So A full stack developer for most companies someone who is willing to do back and front end development if they have to in order to ship a product.

For myself, if I don't like the backend stack I'll stick to the Frontend of things as that is what I specialize in. If the backend stack looks interesting to me then I'll want to work in it. Fortunately, I got a job at a company who can offer me a stack Im interested in on both the front and back ends.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#59

Post by _lex »

_lex wrote: post #24

>"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 th…

One thing I should mention is that on teams where you deliver a lot of product quickly, it can be much easier to develop and maintain both skillsets.

In the end it's not about time, but what you've seen and done.

Re: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer

#60

Post by pbhjpbhj »

I used to do some part-time (second job) lone web dev, this is why i don't anymore:

>"Maintaining a deep knowledge of both front end tools, libraries, and techniques (down to browser-specific quirks), as well as backend architecture […] requires years of experience dedicated to each in addition to the time to keep up to date with how those areas are changing." //

Basically the time to keep up to date with all the tech is increasing; like a growing snake, it's hard to keep track of both ends, and the middle. Also customers expectation increases as familiarity with the web increases.

My definition of full-stack web dev would be everything front-end including things like icon design and optimisation, handling hdpi, logo design, responsive page layout, SEO, font choice and optimisation, dom scripting, etc. through to in-flight issues such as browser caching, CDNs, DNS, security (certs, etc.); through to back-end reverse proxies, varnish, caching, failover, optimisation, actual production of the HTML (PHP in my case) [edit: not forgetting DB, and it's optimisation and management, I never got as far as sharding or anything tricky], and on to keeping servers updated and running securely (SSH key management, firewalls, backup, etc.).

(And in your spare time you do sales and marketing!)

I think it's near impossible to handle the full web stack now; I'd imagine splitting it in to at least 5 roles.

Their definition of full-stack web dev appears to be just LAMP (or similar). So then you've got at minimum a 3 person team: adding a graphic designer, server manager.

Full-stack elsewhere would be something like back-end, gui design, UX, _and_ packaging/installers for distribution?

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