What is a Full Stack developer? (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#71

Post by JohnLBevan » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:14 PM UTC

The definition of a full stack developer is someone who can develop for all of the technologies involved in the stack. What those are depends on the stack (e.g. Postgres SQL + Ruby on Rails + HTML5 + CSS + JS vs. SQL Server + C# + AppFabric + WinForms vs. every other combination of technologies people may be developing on).

Understanding of hardware / environment is a useful skill for any developer - not just a full stack developer - the only difference is the full stack developer needs to know about the intricacies of all areas rather than just the parts which affect their part of the stack (since they're dealing with all parts of the stack).

Understanding of the business is again outside of the definition of a full stack developer, but is a useful skill for any developer to have - if you can understand the problem you aren't so reliant on the spec/analyst to dictate requirements to you meaning you can make assumptions about how your code may change in the future and consider edge cases which are important at a technical level but analysts wouldn't have spotted from a functional level.

With both of the above points these are definitions of good developers - but don't sit in the core definition of full stack developer - the same as a good musician should be good at languages since they'll likely tour; but not speaking French won't affect their piano performance.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#72

Post by mikegioia » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #39

ricardobeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen the term "full stack developer" used outside of web development at all. Do you have any pointers?

Kernel to application level is one way this was used long before the word was appropriated by web developers. And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level.

> And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level.

I don't understand what you mean, what is 'hardware' here?

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#73

Post by rpwilcox » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:48 PM UTC

JohnLBevan wrote: post #71

The definition of a full stack developer is someone who can develop for all of the technologies involved in the stack. What those are depends on the stack (e.g. Postgres SQL + Ruby on Rails + HTML5 + CSS + JS vs. SQL Server + C# + AppFabric + WinForms vs. every other combination of technologies people may be developing on). Understanding of hardware / environment is a useful skill for any developer - not just a full…

> Understanding of the business is again outside of the definition of a full stack developer

Like all of these aspects you don't need to be a full blown business analyst, but a full stack developer does need to understand the business to translate business rules into application behavior/logic. Ideally this full stack developer can also understand the problem domain and app code well enough to collaborate with management / business when they try to introduce rules that would contradict other behaviors of the app or the current app architecture. And, doing this for enough time, you should start to internalize the business rules.

AKA: Behavior Driven Development.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#74

Post by Kudos » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:49 PM UTC

el_fuser wrote: post #51

moconnor wrote: post #14

The first few times I heard the term "full stack" developer it meant somebody who could understand what's going on at all levels of the call stack. That means from the kernel through C libraries, web server / JIT / high-level server langauge, through network layer, through browser implementation, javascript JIT, javascript / CSS / HTML interpretation and layout and so on. Has this turned into "I can does the servers…

Your understanding was my understanding. I wouldn't call someone that just does web development full stack, unless they also wrote the browser.

That understanding limits the term to uselessness.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#75

Post by csixty4 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:54 PM UTC

Gepsens wrote: post #10

So a Full Stack developer is just someone who likes to work in various fields of Software Engineering and has a quick and broad understanding of all kinds of protocols, technologies and design methodologies, plus some amount of creativity ? I don't understand why any Engineer would want their job to be any other way. Moreover, it's not like you can't be full stack anymore after you become an expert in some technology…

Would you believe I was once chewed out by a co-worker for studying design instead of focusing 100% on back-end development?

The full-stack label is important to me because too many developers are eager to pigeonhole themselves, and non-tech people want to apply descriptives to the people around them. People are constantly surprised to learn I can do CSS and Javascript because someone told them I was a "PHP developer". Better hire somebody who knows WordPress because I'm a "Drupal developer".

Of course, my college coursework really was full-stack. I love the smell of solder in the morning.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#76

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 1:58 PM UTC

mikegioia wrote: post #72

jacquesm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kernel to application level is one way this was used long before the word was appropriated by web developers. And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level.

> And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level. I don't understand what you mean, what is 'hardware' here?

Electronics, CPU, memory, assorted glue chips, IO chips, memory devices and so on. In the embedded computing world it is not rare at all to find a single guy that designs the hardware who programs it as well, from the ground up if need be.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#77

Post by pyre » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:09 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #39

ricardobeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen the term "full stack developer" used outside of web development at all. Do you have any pointers?

Kernel to application level is one way this was used long before the word was appropriated by web developers. And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level.

I think that the issue is that now we mean "Full (Web-)Stack Developer" rather than "Full (Technology-)Stack Developer."

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#78

Post by cleaver » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

don_draper wrote: post #58

To me, a Full Stack developer takes responsibility for the full stack. When a problem arises, she doesn't say: * It's a database problem. Call the dbas. * It's a network problem. Call the network folks. * It's an app server problem. Call the ops team. * It's a user interface problem. Call the UI team. A Full Stack developer first says, 'This is my problem until I can locate the problem and possibly identify someone m…

This is a good way to look at things. It is also very frustrating when there are administrative barriers to working the full stack. Not that I advocate handing out root password with your new employee badge, but I don't like it when it is easier to call the ops team than just take a quick peak yourself.

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#79

Post by pyre » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #56

hgh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True - often "full stack developer" is synonymous with dilettante

> True - often "full stack developer" is synonymous with dilettante To me, it reads like this: let's take away one of the only advantages of the web, the strict separation between frontend and backend, by mercilessly introducing heavy coupling and making one end depend completely on the other end for the sake of short-term one-off projects. After all, rockstar developers have long moved on to their next glorious proj…

I self-describe as a full-stack web developer because I've worked on both the front-end and back-end without distinction, and have no particular preference to working on either. Is this considered a bad thing? I don't consider myself a 'rockstar.'

Re: What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)

#80

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:22 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #76

mikegioia wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sometimes even hardware all the way to application level. I don't understand what you mean, what is 'hardware' here?

Electronics, CPU, memory, assorted glue chips, IO chips, memory devices and so on. In the embedded computing world it is not rare at all to find a single guy that designs the hardware who programs it as well, from the ground up if need be.

[deleted]