71–80 of 199 posts
Hmm. Maybe full-stack engineering doesn't need you to believe in it? Though to be fair it probably does, because having your entire professional community believe you don't exist creates ridiculous amounts of frustration, anxiety and imposter syndrome. I do (with skill levels ranging from competent to highly regarded): * UI design * Data architecture * API design * HTML/CSS/JS/React/GraphQL/etc * Front-end accessibil…
[x] devops
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Web developers are not serious?
That's not my point. I'm saying that there's a difference between the full-stack generalist "web developers" who know HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/Ruby, and software engineers who build complex systems, typically in Java/C#/C++.
What actually is your point? Reading between the lines, it seems to be:
"Anyone who calls themselves a full-stack developer is garbage - it's just a matter of what side your garbage is on."
Hmm. Maybe full-stack engineering doesn't need you to believe in it? Though to be fair it probably does, because having your entire professional community believe you don't exist creates ridiculous amounts of frustration, anxiety and imposter syndrome. I do (with skill levels ranging from competent to highly regarded): * UI design * Data architecture * API design * HTML/CSS/JS/React/GraphQL/etc * Front-end accessibil…
eh, throw it up on heroku [x] devops
This article is conflating junior developers with full-stack engineering. I work on the entire stack. Can I work with databases and write queries? Sure. Can I do it as well as a data architect? No. That's not what's expected of a full stack engineer. We can have meaningful, productive discussions with everyone on all parts of the stack. We'll talk with the data architect, write/tweak a query if we need to, we'll talk…
Its EXPECTED however that one not have all the answers.
In my experience, across general app development there are 4 specializations, and any given engineer should be able to straddle 2 of them.
Client Infrastructure | Client Product | Backend Product | Backend Infrastructure
Full stack generally stays to the product side of both. They tend to have a relatively shallow context on the current goings on of infrastructure/tooling, but can focus on one area or another when the time calls.
I disagree with the article. It's a 1,000 word false dichotomy between Full Stack vs. Insert Specialist Here. Sure, if you're a Fortune 500 company, go ahead and hire a DBA, Cloud Architect, Backend Engineer, UI/UX Designer, Graphic Artist, Social Media Marketer, etc. You'll have a few million $ in salary overhead. It may take longer to produce a final product. BUT, it will probably be way better than a product that…
Unless your numbers are completely random just for the example, deciding to run an 1,000 hour project with 10 people is a disaster by itself. How would you involve 10 people in a short 3-4 weeks project?
This article is conflating junior developers with full-stack engineering. I work on the entire stack. Can I work with databases and write queries? Sure. Can I do it as well as a data architect? No. That's not what's expected of a full stack engineer. We can have meaningful, productive discussions with everyone on all parts of the stack. We'll talk with the data architect, write/tweak a query if we need to, we'll talk…
I would cluster skillsets into: ops, development, and design.
Ops: making things highly available, logging, performance monitoring, reliability, deployment scripts
Development: Writing code on both frontend and backend.
Design: Visual design and CSS/HTML
Most developers I've interacted with at various companies write both APIs in the backend and user facing UI. In my experience it's becoming increasingly rare that a frontend developer doesn't also write backend code.
They typically aren't very good at making their apps deployable and highly available, and they also aren't very good at making things look good with CSS. Sure they can do it, but it isn't their specialty and it would be quite a learning curve or it just takes them much longer than someone who does just that.
When hiring people, I like to find people who are strong individually in those 3 areas (ops, programming, design). I don't try to find programmers who can do ops or design. I don't worry so much about a frontend engineer being able to do backend work and vice versa, the crossover is generally smooth and interchangeable.
It is generally easy to find ops, and programmers who specialize and are talented. Designers who can do visual design and code it up are a bit rarer, so sometimes it is needed have 1 person do design and another person code it up.
Also, a very senior person is obviously going to be stronger in each of those areas, so full stack is highly correlated with working experience.
Databases? Containers? VMs? I don't even know where to start!
But when I got into serverless, it wasn't that hard.
Sure, with DynamoDB and S3 I have to manage aspects of my storage, but not much.
Sure, whith Lambda and API-Gateway I have to manage aspects of my back-end API, but not much.
Setting up a DB cluster and microservices with containers is something a fully fledged back-end dev needs to do.
But getting something decent up and running with serverless technologies is something I can do too.
Even in a team of specialists, some of the work they do can be off-loaded to a full-stack developer to free them up for tasks that require more of their expertise. For example, a front-end specialist would be better off optimising the slow page response times of the product's news feed or implementing a new application page altogether than, say, adjusting css that break on a few view ports. In a big team, you can pus…
This is a weird rant. He is complaining that someone who does many things won't be as good in front-end as someone who does only front end. ...ok? Nobody expects full stack engineer to be all that great in front-end. That's why he is not a front end engineer. Vice versa he won't probably be all that good in SQL or in administration and devops. I am not even sure what is this guy complaining about exactly