As a "full-stack developer" since 2008, I can help with some resolution over the term: it's bullshit. Affiliate marketing niches were always looking for full-on and complete developers and by that they meant their own software stack, something that at the time end even before was never "just LAMP" for example. You would call yourself "principal developer for X" which in turn meant you are a "full" stack developer at that company.
The biggest conspiracy theory is to think somehow the term was invented by developers with the rise of new software stacks - that is very wrong. I also distinctly remember people and companies up until like 2015 looking for people capable to define and build their entire stacks and not knowing how to search for such a person, sometimes described as "we need a one man army developer".
When I first saw the term used in job descriptions it was simply stupid, you could be a full-stack developer with some specialisations listed, like java/php/node and everything around it, but it never meant "everything everything". Greedy people trying take credit for the term or making up search engine trends (tl;dr: bots) are just a waste of time and attention in a market where the term has been so overused it essentially lost any value ever since someone somewhere prefixed it with "junior".
Not trying to rant but my attachment to the term is long dead, Developer Relations and Developer Advocate being the bread and butter of what being a great developer means lately :D
Well I'm glad to hear as a Developer Advocate that I've got the right title at least 🥳.
I think that's a totally valid rant. My use of the term has never had anything to do with job titles or even people really. For me it's more to do with frameworks. It's mostly just been a useful shorthand for me to specify a framework that includes some kind of client side tool, a server, and a database (Redwood, Blitz, Bison as the canonical examples) in contrast to a framework that is only client side (React, Vue) or client side and server side but without a database (Next, Nuxt).
Do you think there's a more suitable term to describe this concept, or should I just give up on trying to find a succinct way of explaining this distinction?
I mean in terms of development I view anyone seriously into it as an engineer and treat words and complex terms as attention media / hype. It's good to be able to talk to everyone, but not worth the damage projecting such thing onto oneself causes :D
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As a "full-stack developer" since 2008, I can help with some resolution over the term: it's bullshit. Affiliate marketing niches were always looking for full-on and complete developers and by that they meant their own software stack, something that at the time end even before was never "just LAMP" for example. You would call yourself "principal developer for X" which in turn meant you are a "full" stack developer at that company.
The biggest conspiracy theory is to think somehow the term was invented by developers with the rise of new software stacks - that is very wrong. I also distinctly remember people and companies up until like 2015 looking for people capable to define and build their entire stacks and not knowing how to search for such a person, sometimes described as "we need a one man army developer".
When I first saw the term used in job descriptions it was simply stupid, you could be a full-stack developer with some specialisations listed, like java/php/node and everything around it, but it never meant "everything everything". Greedy people trying take credit for the term or making up search engine trends (tl;dr: bots) are just a waste of time and attention in a market where the term has been so overused it essentially lost any value ever since someone somewhere prefixed it with "junior".
Not trying to rant but my attachment to the term is long dead, Developer Relations and Developer Advocate being the bread and butter of what being a great developer means lately :D
Well I'm glad to hear as a Developer Advocate that I've got the right title at least 🥳.
I think that's a totally valid rant. My use of the term has never had anything to do with job titles or even people really. For me it's more to do with frameworks. It's mostly just been a useful shorthand for me to specify a framework that includes some kind of client side tool, a server, and a database (Redwood, Blitz, Bison as the canonical examples) in contrast to a framework that is only client side (React, Vue) or client side and server side but without a database (Next, Nuxt).
Do you think there's a more suitable term to describe this concept, or should I just give up on trying to find a succinct way of explaining this distinction?
I mean in terms of development I view anyone seriously into it as an engineer and treat words and complex terms as attention media / hype. It's good to be able to talk to everyone, but not worth the damage projecting such thing onto oneself causes :D