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I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

robinrendle.com

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Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#141

Post by Illniyar »

I don't believe in Specialized front/backend development when it relates to web development.

Web development is and should always be a full-stack affair. Otherwise your frontend developers would request apis in a way that destroy performance and create a database model or logic that is unmaintainable on the server-side. Your backend developers would make apis that make the requested front-end design make a hundred api calls or api calls in the wrong places (like during a transition/animation).

It's not just about communication either, though that's also important - it's exceedingly hard for specialized developers to understand the reasons for another's requests, being full-stack means you can see the full-picture.

It's about owning the feature/product from beginning to end. It's about knowing what tradeoffs to make in the serverside, clientside, database or ops, which you can only do effectively if you are familiar with each. It's about never being stuck waiting for your backend to fix an api that isn't right, for your dba to build that query so it won't take a year to run.

That isn't to say that you can't specialize while being Full-stack or that specialized roles outside of web development shouldn't exist (for example game development, big data, machine learning).

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#142

Post by ssijak »

k__ wrote: post #77

I have to admit, full-stack stuff sounded really horrible to me, coming from front-end development. 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 mi…

I would never call someone who can only do serverless on the "backend" full-stack.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#143

Post by ssijak »

flashgordon wrote: post #5

Oh thank god! Finally glad to see this koolaid getting dispersed. I hope some of the glory gets reimbursed to embedded and systems level engineers too :)

You sound like someone who is not good or dislikes either backend or frontend work and cheers for anybody who says that one person can`t do work. There are many of us who can.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#145

Post by justaaron »

The author supports bloated stacks driven by trendy concepts. I highly disagree with nearly every point the author raises. At the end of the day, there is http where there is the request/response cycle, and knowing how the machine works is essential, so obfuscation and nonsense should be eschewed in lieu of greater clarity of understanding. One can pre-load data into a server rendered template but then one essentially has to load new data (hello xhr or websockets) and update the dom accordingly. Everything else is just noise. Full stack engineering gives one a comprehensive overview of the virtual machine. While SPA and serverless architectures (not to mention graphQL, postgrest, and other attempts to basically agglomerate the backend server onto the database) alter this equation, having full comprehensive knowledge of this is the equivalent of a mechanic knowing her/his engine, or a soldier being able to field strip his/her armament.

So, here we have a click-bait title and our reactions are feeding into the apparent pretensions to fame engendered.

next.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#146

Post by EnderMB »

I can understand the authors frustrations. I too have worked with loads of full-stack developers that have been fairly standard at both, or people that market themselves as full-stack, but are either Ruby/Python developers that can throw together a React app, or front-end wizards that can barely navigate enough Rails to build a basic CRUD app.

Where the idea falls flat is where you draw the lines in each discipline. Do you expect a front-end developer to have domain knowledge of all the leading frameworks out today? Do you expect them to be immediately productive on an Node/Express project? Additionally, on the back-end side, would you expect that person to have written production-ready code in a set of languages like Ruby, Python, C# and so, with full domain knowledge of all their respective frameworks? There are front-end devs that know a huge amount on the frontend side, and backend devs with working knowledge in a whole range of languages, but it's difficult to find a (sane) person that knows it all.

But, if you're a Rails shop, it's not uncommon for someone to know Rails really well, and be a solid frontend developer. If Ruby/Rails is your bag then that person is a full-stack developer, even though they might be completely useless if you're a .NET shop. Using myself as an example, I was fairly solid on the front-end, but as I got more involved with back-end dev I found my domain knowledge falling behind. I reckon I could throw together a halfway-decent front-end application, alongside a Rails/Django/ASP.NET MVC application, but I'd feel uncomfortable calling myself a full-stack developer because I don't consider myself good enough to know it all.

I'd be doing myself and a future employer a disservice by selling myself as such, but it doesn't mean that people don't, especially more controlling developers that want control over every aspect of an application.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#147

Post by cortexio »

There's nothing wrong with full stack. A full stacker can be better at frontend than a pure frontend developer. It all depends who you are talking about. But it's most likely not the case because those frontenders only have to learn frontend. They just play on easy-mode and then you have people like OP who are suprised they are ahead in the game.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#148

Post by sumedh »

Illniyar wrote: post #141

I don't believe in Specialized front/backend development when it relates to web development. Web development is and should always be a full-stack affair. Otherwise your frontend developers would request apis in a way that destroy performance and create a database model or logic that is unmaintainable on the server-side. Your backend developers would make apis that make the requested front-end design make a hundred ap…

> I don't believe in Specialized front/backend development when it relates to web development.

Do you really expect a backend java developer to be comfortable with angular/react and vice a versa?

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#149

Post by bhanu423 »

mikekchar wrote: post #124
mygo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not always. Just finished up a 7 week deadline in 12. 2x in my experience has been a fairly reliable estimate. A 3-4x project has either gone completely out of scope or was poorly estimated. And it’s not always the development team’s fault. Sometimes the client is not timely, or even habitually late with deliverables. Unless you’ve worked with them before and know what to expect, give the client a timeline of X but q…

Estimates are interesting and I encourage anybody to play with the statistics to see how it works. There are 2 scenarios you need to consider. First is the scenario where the stake holder asks for something, the thing is possible (i.e. it's a matter of working on it until it's done), they don't change their mind, the team doesn't have some kind of emotional incident (like people refusing to work together, someone hav…

Excellent points, I think the whole point of SCRUM planning is to get estimations correctly and it is not as easy reading few articles on it. Hence involving a scrum-master is highly recommended who is usually a person like mikekchar who has done it multiple times atleast.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#150

Post by icebraining »

Illniyar wrote: post #141

I don't believe in Specialized front/backend development when it relates to web development. Web development is and should always be a full-stack affair. Otherwise your frontend developers would request apis in a way that destroy performance and create a database model or logic that is unmaintainable on the server-side. Your backend developers would make apis that make the requested front-end design make a hundred ap…

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with the author. In the article, full-stack is described as being "the ability to easily navigate the back-end and front-end with a senior level of expertise."

I'm a backend dev; I know enough JS and CSS to build a prototype, or to make a tweak like you're suggesting, but I can't build a production-level frontend app or website. If that's full-stack, the term is a bit too fluid to be meaningful, in my opinion.

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