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I don't approve of the "full stack" mindset, or the term. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but I am past that point now. The idea is that full stack engineer

I don't approve of the "full stack" mindset, or the term. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but I am past that point now. The idea is that full stack engineers implement features "vertically" by maintaining various parts of a "stack" at the same time. Sounds good, but often the result is bad. A web frontend is very resilient, whereas backends are the complete opposite. If you apply the same mindset on both it better be a backend mindset: - what happens if you leak memory in a web page? well, eventually the user will navigate away, and all resources would be freed, making everything fine. You do it on a server? your server will eventually collapse. - What happens if you don't handle an exception on a webpage? Not a lot. But on a server? many things can happen... you can crash a server process, leak memory, etc. - Security is similar. Browsers have restrictive defaults whereas servers don't. And the list goes on and on. This is why "full stack" to me is a red-flag. Full stack to me equates "competent at front end, has some knowledge about servers but requires supervision".

pc86 8y ago
> A web frontend is very resilient, whereas backends are the complete opposite. If you apply the same mindset on both Even if I accept your premise (which I don't), nobody is suggesting you apply the same mindset to two different things. I consider myself a full stack developer, but if I had to pick one it would be back end as that's where I started, where my strengths lie, and if I never wrote another line of JavaScript in my life I'd be pretty happy overall. But your characterization of full stack devs does not match up to my reality.
- partycoder 8y ago
  I salute your approach to engineering but that's certainly not how employers view it. I am not saying that frontend engineering is trivial. It clearly has many overlapping and non-overlapping requirements. But they non-overlapping part is large enough to require dedication and specialization. DevOps and DBAs overlap with backend but it would be weird for a backend engineers to call themselves devops engineers or database administrators because of that. The latter suggest specialization.

pc86 8y ago

> A web frontend is very resilient, whereas backends are the complete opposite. If you apply the same mindset on both Even if I accept your premise (which I don't), nobody is suggesting you apply the same mindset to two different things. I consider myself a full stack developer, but if I had to pick one it would be back end as that's where I started, where my strengths lie, and if I never wrote another line of JavaScript in my life I'd be pretty happy overall. But your characterization of full stack devs does not match up to my reality.

partycoder 8y ago
I salute your approach to engineering but that's certainly not how employers view it. I am not saying that frontend engineering is trivial. It clearly has many overlapping and non-overlapping requirements. But they non-overlapping part is large enough to require dedication and specialization. DevOps and DBAs overlap with backend but it would be weird for a backend engineers to call themselves devops engineers or database administrators because of that. The latter suggest specialization.