You didn't explain why you take it personally. I was looking for the part where you say that you or one of your friends is a full stack developer, but didn't see it. In other words, if there is an offense, who is the offended party?
What I instantly saw is that someone knows how to draw an entire horse, but they're much better at drawing one part of it than at drawing the other.
I see it more as making fun of what happens when the industry invents a useless, meaningless label and then pressures developers to identify with it.
The most fun I had was on a team where I would develop everything from the backend database and services to the front-end rendering and JavaScript. Then, right at the point where it came time to apply CSS I'd hand it off to people who were really good at it. We'd collaborate a lot on the front end, tweaking the HTML and behavior.
Pushing more on the front end improved my skills. I didn't become a JavaScript rock star but I wrote good, maintainable code. But if I did the whole thing myself it would look like the front of that horse.
I don't think that "full stack" is much more ambiguous than "front" or "back".
Does anybody expect a "back end" developer to be a master of all things back end? Dos, Bash, distributed systems, SQL, C#, Java, C, Rust, Encryption, Networking, Cloud, REST, SOAP, performance, Graph databases, Timeseries databases, multi threaded concurrency, Hadoop,MEF,sharing memory, etc?
And what about solo developers? Stardew Valley (game) was written by one person, were they a front end or back end developer? Seems to me like they did a great job at both, so why refuse to call them by one of the best terms we have for them just because that term is flawed.
Can't we just agree that naming is hard, and let people call themselves whatever thing they think works the best for them?
That's so true and funny. If "front end" and "back end" actually meant anything specific then "full stack" wouldn't be ambiguous at all. It would just be front + back.
Versatile software engineer with a background in .NET consulting and CMS development. Working on regaining my embedded development skills to get more involved with IoT opportunities.
For me, I define full stack as being able to throw sysadmin and DevOps skills into the mix. I can built components in React but you should not ask me to style them, I can write and integrate with APIs all day long, but I've always been the one who volunteers / is volunteered to maintain the build pipelines and handle deployments and I've picked up a lot more than I ever wanted to learn about DBA stuff from an incompetent coworker. I define a full stack dev as someone who can contribute to any area of the project, maybe not the most effective or fast work, but still contribute nonetheless.
Yup, you have a pretty great example of a high functioning team that shares and understands each team member’s strengths and weaknesses. I did mention it in the article, but I have worked on products where the front-end team was in a completely different team than the backend team. That’s the organizational disfunction that I’m trying to help eliminate.
That's exactly the way that I understand this meme as well. I love working on frontend and backend myself, but the term "Full Stack Developer" is too often an excuse for a company to invest too little in people and then expect too much of those few "Full Stack Developers".
It's also about the reduced value of of "just" being a Frontend or "just" Backend developer. Yes most of us know both sides, but there's always one side that you're currently much more focused on.
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You didn't explain why you take it personally. I was looking for the part where you say that you or one of your friends is a full stack developer, but didn't see it. In other words, if there is an offense, who is the offended party?
What I instantly saw is that someone knows how to draw an entire horse, but they're much better at drawing one part of it than at drawing the other.
I see it more as making fun of what happens when the industry invents a useless, meaningless label and then pressures developers to identify with it.
The most fun I had was on a team where I would develop everything from the backend database and services to the front-end rendering and JavaScript. Then, right at the point where it came time to apply CSS I'd hand it off to people who were really good at it. We'd collaborate a lot on the front end, tweaking the HTML and behavior.
Pushing more on the front end improved my skills. I didn't become a JavaScript rock star but I wrote good, maintainable code. But if I did the whole thing myself it would look like the front of that horse.
I don't think that "full stack" is much more ambiguous than "front" or "back".
Does anybody expect a "back end" developer to be a master of all things back end? Dos, Bash, distributed systems, SQL, C#, Java, C, Rust, Encryption, Networking, Cloud, REST, SOAP, performance, Graph databases, Timeseries databases, multi threaded concurrency, Hadoop,MEF,sharing memory, etc?
And what about solo developers? Stardew Valley (game) was written by one person, were they a front end or back end developer? Seems to me like they did a great job at both, so why refuse to call them by one of the best terms we have for them just because that term is flawed.
Can't we just agree that naming is hard, and let people call themselves whatever thing they think works the best for them?
That's so true and funny. If "front end" and "back end" actually meant anything specific then "full stack" wouldn't be ambiguous at all. It would just be front + back.
For me, I define full stack as being able to throw sysadmin and DevOps skills into the mix. I can built components in React but you should not ask me to style them, I can write and integrate with APIs all day long, but I've always been the one who volunteers / is volunteered to maintain the build pipelines and handle deployments and I've picked up a lot more than I ever wanted to learn about DBA stuff from an incompetent coworker. I define a full stack dev as someone who can contribute to any area of the project, maybe not the most effective or fast work, but still contribute nonetheless.
And I bet your team loves that you pitch in! :) That’s awesome. :)
Love it, I'd much rather work with somebody that says "How can I help?" than "Not much job!".
Yup, you have a pretty great example of a high functioning team that shares and understands each team member’s strengths and weaknesses. I did mention it in the article, but I have worked on products where the front-end team was in a completely different team than the backend team. That’s the organizational disfunction that I’m trying to help eliminate.
That's exactly the way that I understand this meme as well. I love working on frontend and backend myself, but the term "Full Stack Developer" is too often an excuse for a company to invest too little in people and then expect too much of those few "Full Stack Developers".
It's also about the reduced value of of "just" being a Frontend or "just" Backend developer. Yes most of us know both sides, but there's always one side that you're currently much more focused on.