Front end developer should rather work on his designer skills rather than backend stuff. Not being able to design cool interface makes frontend dev boring to work with.
Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#42Good luck being a decent front-end and a decent back-end developer. Besides their different nature. The volume and amount of knowledge is too much to be able to do both at a decent level unless you sacrifice your personal life or you are some sort of super talented nerd. If you dedicate 24 hours a day to both, there will always be someone who will dedicate theirs to only one. You can't beat that competition and it is…
Nonsense. You just need to have a huge amount of experience which can be gained which takes time.
There will always be a lot of people who have spent their time focusing only on one of the two.
If you have put in the same level of effort, he/she will have twice as much experience as you in which ever of the two they have chosen to specialise in.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#43[deleted]
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#44Looking at Software from the perspective of other engineering disciplines, I certainly wouldn't say that I see any over specialization. My dad, for example, is a structural engineer, with a PhD is fracture mechanics, who has spent most of careers specializing in cracks in welds and for the latter half of his career sub-specializing in cracks in welds in underwater pipelines. And even with all that specialization (and probably because of it) he has more work than he has time to do and is very far from being irrelevant.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#45I disagree actually. I think having a specialization (front-end vs. back-end for example) is a good thing. It allows someone to dedicate themselves to one specific area and learn it thoroughly. When I'm doing back-end development, I love having a front-end guy who can make it look pretty - I don't want to have to use time/energy up doing that when I'm concentrating on making a secure, fast, maintainable back-end. How…
I agree with this, but for a different reason.
Having specializations work for developers, not against. Consider all these technical lead sort of job openings in start ups asking the developer to execute everything from being archetecture to test/development to deployment. If you want to subject yourself to this, by all means, but keep in mind that there are developers who just want to go home at 5.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#46The issue is about ego and understanding, not specialization.
Fishermen probably think they're hot shit and that developers are useless people building addictive distractions.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#47Well, I'll be the devil's advocate. What about Adam Smith? He noted that division of labor in a factory will increase its productivity and make the workers much more effective. While a software company is not entirely comparable to a factory, why does the same principle not apply? Devs who can concentrate on one part of the stack can become experts in that area, increasing their productivity--and consequently increas…
Not to mention, in a lot of factories, although the labour is broken down into operations, operators will be trained in every operation and switch between them.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#48I disagree actually. I think having a specialization (front-end vs. back-end for example) is a good thing. It allows someone to dedicate themselves to one specific area and learn it thoroughly. When I'm doing back-end development, I love having a front-end guy who can make it look pretty - I don't want to have to use time/energy up doing that when I'm concentrating on making a secure, fast, maintainable back-end. How…
What you said: "When I'm doing back-end development, I love having a front-end guy who can make it look pretty" How that sounds to me: "When I'm done with a hard day's work, I love having a wife at home who can make me a drink" Seriously! Read what you wrote.
[deleted]
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you said: "When I'm doing back-end development, I love having a front-end guy who can make it look pretty" How that sounds to me: "When I'm done with a hard day's work, I love having a wife at home who can make me a drink" Seriously! Read what you wrote.
I don't think I understand the analogy? If two people are working on the same project and one enjoys and specializes in front-end development and the other enjoys and specializes in back-end development, and the project is roughly 50/50 front-end and back-end, why on earth should they NOT split up the project accordingly? They will both enjoy working on it more, they will get it done faster, and with better results t…
He was saying that the phrasing, from a back end guy, revealed exactly the lazy attitude that was described in the post.
When a back end guy says, "Hey front end guy, make it look pretty" -- that's not showing much appreciation for what they actually do. Front end guys: is what you do just making things look pretty? Or maybe it's closer to understanding how people actually use a product. And designing a UI that can cater to both novices and experts, etc.
Re: Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nonsense. You just need to have a huge amount of experience which can be gained which takes time.
There will always be a lot of people who have spent their time focusing only on one of the two. If you have put in the same level of effort, he/she will have twice as much experience as you in which ever of the two they have chosen to specialise in.
Yeah, but as soon as they need to bridge the gap, they have to enlist help from someone else.
And when they find that person, they have to communicate their needs using voice or text rather than raw thoughts. Need to change requirements? Send another email or walk over to your partner's desk.
Never underestimate the cost of communication.