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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

#151

Post by pluma »

Show me a front-end developer that has mastered every aspect of front-end development, or a back-end developer that has mastered every aspect of back-end development.

Everyone else only gets to pick a somewhat arbitrary subset of those aspects. Some pick subsets from both front-end and back-end (in fact even for a front-end developer having at least some understanding of back-end development is a good idea and vice versa). If those subsets have no clear bias for one over the other, congrats: you're doing full-stack.

Yes, the label is misleading, not every full-stack developer can literally work at any level of the stack equally proficiently. And if they're relatively new to programming they may have spread themselves too thin.

Heck, in the 90s most web developers were "full stack" by necessity (mostly because there wasn't much of a frontend until CSS gained traction and AJAX became a thing). Back then we just called them "webmasters".

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

#152

Post by icebraining »

robertAngst wrote: post #102
DanHulton wrote: post #41

The misunderstanding the author makes is that a Full Stack Engineer is a specialist in all roles. They're not. They're simply Intermediate to Senior in most. I'd defer to a specialist in essentially every field, but if you require a broad range of work to be done without hiring a half-dozen people, I'm who you're looking for. The best title we have got that kind of experience is Full Stack. (It's also a well-understo…

I barely understand why you would have more than a few full stack engineers ever. The guy talked about having beautiful SCSS. At some point, you are talking about design and less about engineering. Full stack is a job to be taken on by a small team. Having a large team with lots of full stack makes 0 sense.

CSS might involve design, but it also involves engineering. Optimizing code size and rendering speed and fluidity are certainly engineering tasks.

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

#153

Post by icebraining »

anonytrary wrote: post #96

> Of all the engineers I’ve met over the years only one has come close to what that title, full-stack engineer, implies: the ability to easily navigate the back-end and front-end with a senior level of expertise. In the first paragraph, the author sets up a really weak straw man for himself to defeat. If you define "full-stack engineer" as "an expert at front and back end", it's pretty easy to not believe in it since…

Is it a straw man? The job openings I've read for full-stack developers certainly seem to ask for experts in both.

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

#154

Post by serpix »

sumedh wrote: post #148
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?

yes!! That is what full stack is.

You can, if needed, produce a working app working from the database all the way to front end. This includes, design, ops and development. All of it.

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

#155

Post by thorin »

ww520 wrote: post #113
nickpeterson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure your reasons are valid, but I laughed a bit when I read that you use Oracle and don't have the budget for more people.

Oracle Express is free. It's close to full feature as the Standard one, except some limitation on number of connections and some enterprise feature.

Yes Oracle 11g XE is free although you are stuck a version behind the latest 12c release. You get a lot of stuff in there although you are limited on db size as well. You do get apex which you can use to build web apps easily and all your pl/sql will work but there are some limitations around Java in the database and anything that relies on that. It's definitely worth a go, but if you are starting from scratch Postgres is probably more appealing now.

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

#156

Post by Illniyar »

icebraining wrote: post #150
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…

I expect senior fullstack developers to have senior level of knowledge and expertise in backend and frontend. I don't expect senior level expertise from junior full-stack developers.

For that matter if you were a senior full-stack developer I would expect you to be able to build a production level frontend as well as a production level backend (though maybe not operation-wise, I.E. deployments and configuration, depending on your background).

That still doesn't preclude having expertise. For instance I wouldn't expect a full-stack developer to know how browser rendering works or the difference between layout and paint events (but I would expect him to know to never access an element's size during an animation) - that's someone with an expertise in front-end performance.

But anyway that's not what I gathered from the article, to me it purports that back-end developers shouldn't do front-end work.

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

#157

Post by Illniyar »

sumedh wrote: post #148
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?

Indeed. These aren't very complicated subjects, it's easy enough to learn and doesn't require full-time work to become an expert with (and the same goes for backend web development), it merely requires constant practice and dealing with production.

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

#158

Post by Illniyar »

mmt wrote: post #88
nickpeterson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure your reasons are valid, but I laughed a bit when I read that you use Oracle and don't have the budget for more people.

> I laughed a bit when I read that you use Oracle and don't have the budget for more people. Why? Because you believe the former causes the latter? There are many valid criticisms to be levied against Oracle the company, enteprise software in general, and especially its pricing. However, it's important to remember that, for many businesses, it's either impractical or downright impossible to hire enough engineers to m…

Errr... the cost value of Oracle database is skewed. It simply costs sooo much it's impractical for most companies to use, especially if they cannot afford more then 1 decent engineer.

We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu).

Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis or ElasticSearch.

It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.

Which usually means that if a company uses OracleDB they are loaded with money.

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

#159

Post by Illniyar »

thorin wrote: post #155
ww520 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle Express is free. It's close to full feature as the Standard one, except some limitation on number of connections and some enterprise feature.

Yes Oracle 11g XE is free although you are stuck a version behind the latest 12c release. You get a lot of stuff in there although you are limited on db size as well. You do get apex which you can use to build web apps easily and all your pl/sql will work but there are some limitations around Java in the database and anything that relies on that. It's definitely worth a go, but if you are starting from scratch Postgr…

I didn't know you can even use Oracle Express in a commercial settings, I've always seen it as a developer edition.

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

#160

Post by icebraining »

Illniyar wrote: post #156
icebraining wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I expect senior fullstack developers to have senior level of knowledge and expertise in backend and frontend. I don't expect senior level expertise from junior full-stack developers. For that matter if you were a senior full-stack developer I would expect you to be able to build a production level frontend as well as a production level backend (though maybe not operation-wise, I.E. deployments and configuration, depe…

It all just sounds muddled terminology to me. You say you expect them to have "expertise in backend and frontend", but then you say you wouldn't expect them to have expertise like "know[ing] how browser rendering works". So what is it? :)
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