I know managers love that term, but I think I’ve come to hear it as an insult… Sorta like being called an unprofessional “jack of all trades” budget handyman that does everything mediocre…
I think it’s a complement. We’re not in the dark ages anymore where you had to be intimately familiar with each target platform and have different people who each know everything about their little part of the stack. Nowadays it’s feasible for one person to be productive in devops, database, backend, frontend, etc. because so many people have gone to great effort to get us there. I personally get a lot of enjoyment out of being able to stand up an app by myself without necessarily needing to work with six other teams. That way we can have an actual vision for an overall user experience rather than getting caught up in compatibilities and discussions of ever changing best practices.
“Full stack” is a way to devalue front end work.
I would mostly be confused based on my lack of any programming experience.
I would mostly be confused based on my years of programming experience
Well, personally, I’d be pretty peeved because my favorite focus is database shit - but in general I don’t put much stock into titles unless they’re being disbursed to justify forcing more work on me without compensation.
It’s a compliment. Simply put, a senior full stack developer has leverage in their career’s direction that a senior frontend or senior backend developer doesn’t.
“Are you a full stack developer?”
“No, I specialize in …”
That is a compliment. The separation of front end developer and back end developer is obsolete and untrue. Either you are a developer or not. If you work on web, then you must, now or in the future, know how web browsers work, how APIs work, how to write and consume them, etc. The browser is just an API we consume from JS. There are many others.
I agree that back end dev and front end JS are pretty much the same skillset, but HTML and CSS (especially so if you include design and UX) are very different and not something I would expect any dev to be able to pick up easily.
I’m not going to write .Net, you can’t make me do it. I’m not going to write Python, you can’t make me do it.
Is your backend Node?!? Let’s go baby, I’m a full stack dev.
If you’re not being sarcastic, why limit yourself to only one thing? If you’re working on some amazing UI with tons of CSS animations and a full audiovisual experience, and it takes intimate knowledge of everything frontend, I guess it would make sense. But if you’re just making internal CRUD apps, I don’t see a reason why a given domain is special enough to have its own job title.
Node and JS is just an example of how easy it is to write code for the back and front ends. You may employ as much langues as you want like PHP, Java, Rust, Python or even Elixir. Does not matter.
100% agree. Programming is programming, and these divisions are arbitrary and restrictive.
It’d be like if someone wanted to learn a language, but refused to learn vocabulary about an important topic.
Neither
Repeat after me: full stack of deez nuts!
Before I answer, I need to give some background. I’ve been in IT for past 20 years. I’ve been a backend developer, frontend developer, mobile developer, database administrator and most recently a devops engineer. I’ve got a degree in electronics and telecommunications and have had quite a bit of exposure to printed circuit board design, including processor programming. To answer your question, when someone refers to me as a “full stack” I don’t take this as an insult. But it’s diminishing.
I’d assume they were trying to pimp me to some buzzwordoholic. I don’t see any reasonable interpretation of it that’s insulting, though.
Having it be (perceived as) the norm is absolutely stupid - but the issue is with ignorant management and recruiters, not people who get into entire stacks honestly for fun or profit.
I would assume you were misinformed and promptly point you to my previous JavaScript projects to dissuade you of such illusions.
My company has everything, but the titles are usually self-assigned.
Back end developers tend to write weird front end code, so their front end PRs usually need extra scrutiny.
Front end developers tend to write careless back end code, so their back end PRs usually need extra scrutiny.
I am a full stack developer, so all of my PRs need extra scrutiny.
It’s kind of meaningless - there’s only really development. If I was being brutally honest I do think a bit less of people who only work inside their one little niche of software, particularly if is just something like react, Salesforce or a CMS.
I’m more insulted when people call themselves “full stack” but can’t restart Apache on their own.
Perhaps their “stack” only ever uses caddy
Perhaps their stack is on Windows 2005 Server
Perhaps what they developed is a bunch of Windows 2005 Servers stacked on top of each other
