What “full stack” really means to the job market
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#2A lot of it is bullshit.
One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects"
Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30.
Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice, but is is called being one of the cool kids in computing.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#3A lot of it is bullshit. One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30. Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice,…
> One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects"
Its not so much that it is impossible to estimate software projects as it is that the analysis necessary to estimate software projects with reasonable accuracy involves doing a substantial portion of the work required to produce the solution -- which means that accurate estimation that is useful for decisionmaking is elusive, not that estimation is impossible.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#4>I have met many programmers that don’t like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers.
Whatever little credibility you had up to this point you've just lost.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#5A lot of it is bullshit. One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30. Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice,…
> One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Its not so much that it is impossible to estimate software projects as it is that the analysis necessary to estimate software projects with reasonable accuracy involves doing a substantial portion of the work required to produce the solution -- which means that accurate estimation that is useful for decisionmaking is el…
I heartily agree. This view is actually supported mathematically. See "Large Limits to Software Estimation" (http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/kcsest.pdf) by J.P. Lewis. Supplementary materials: http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#6A lot of it is bullshit. One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30. Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice,…
Is writing "the average bizapp" as an SPA a bad trade off? Depends on the circumstances and the people involved, but it's certainly not clear to me that this is going to take more time, or entail more risk, than writing an "old school webapp".
Doctors are expected to stay up-to-date too, and at least keep an open mind about new treatments and procedures.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#7A lot of it is bullshit. One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30. Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice,…
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Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#8>I have met many programmers that don’t like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers. Whatever little credibility you had up to this point you've just lost.
This opinion needs to fucking die in a fire already.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#9>I have met many programmers that don’t like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers. Whatever little credibility you had up to this point you've just lost.
Not exactly, because someone who explores other technologies unrelated to his/her "work" field will inevitably pick up experience and knowledge - which the employer can grab for free without sending the employee to expensive courses or having to hire highly specialized freelancers.
I have done a lot of weird things as "hobby" projects with even weirder technologies, including interfacing with smartcards in PHP (don't ask), working with cheap-ass Chinese thermoprinters, electronic chips, devkits, FPGAs, operating a mixed OpenLDAP/AD stack,... and I very often have profited at my job from the knowledge I gained while developing.
Oh, and someone who never heard of Apache rewrite rules please shouldn't call himself a full-stack developer. Ops (and being able to formulate ops requirements to a hoster!) are a part of the stack, too, not just deploying some nodejs stuff to a container in the cloud.
Re: What “full stack” really means to the job market
#10A lot of it is bullshit. One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects" Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30. Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice,…
Medicine's been a work in progress for centuries, doctors have done and believed all kinds of stuff we can call crazy today to figure out what works.
Your sore knee analogy... probably really did end in wholesale unnecessary amputation and death until we shot and hacked up enough people during wars to learn more accurate ways to treat a sore leg. We learned a lot from crude, violent and deadly experiments by Nazi doctors doing stuff that would be intuitively recognized as illegal in most countries today.
Programming is also in a state of evolution. Maybe one day we'll look back at SPAs and everyone will agree they were as crap as java apps in browsers. We used to think asbestos, lead, oil, cigarettes, opium etc were great solutions too.