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…
Repeat after me: full stack of deez nuts!
I think it depends on the context. Calling me a full stack is an acknowledgement that I can work on every step of the system and usually every part of the system. I don’t consider it to mean equally good.
However if it keeps getting brought up when I am not supposed to be working on those other steps, that signals to me that maybe they are trying to push more work into me that I shouldn’t be do.
I can appreciate that when someone says “Our X Expert”. It definitely feels like more praise and more value.
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.
“Are you a full stack developer?”
“No, I specialize in …”
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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.
Neither
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 The separation of front end developer and back end developer is obsolete and untrue.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I prefer the term “busty”
Fully-stacked developer…
Times have changed.
In the olden days, being ‘full-stack’ also involved memorizing resistor band colors and huffing solder fumes.
Kids these days.
I couldn’t imagine tying myself to a single category for my whole career.
I’ve done front end, back end, database, web, Windows, and Linux development. If the job calls for learning something new, I’m on it. These days I’m making datacenter software for admins to use to manage their distributed applications. Before this, I was doing the same thing for factory automation at the edge.
Specializing has its value, but the more flexible you can be, the more useful you will be when the landscape changes and your boss suddenly asks you to set up an AI system or something.
I would assume you were misinformed and promptly point you to my previous JavaScript projects to dissuade you of such illusions.
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
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