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Sometimes I think I'm a 'full stack' developer, and then I read something like this. Sure I can dabble in simple assembly, but there's always a bigger fish.
by anitil 8y ago
Sometimes I think I'm a 'full stack' developer, and then I read something like this. Sure I can dabble in simple assembly, but there's always a bigger fish.
- nickpsecurity 8y agoWell, that's pretty humble of you. :) I advocated for the term to only be used by folks that can build their own computer, language, OS, and apps. Look up Chuck Moore and Niklaus Wirth for examples focusing on simplicity. For full-stack architect w/ team building it, look up Bob Barton of Burrough B5000. I cant remember if early folks writing Lisp interpreters built the CPU's, too. I know Burger did for a Scheme CPU, though.
- hcs 8y agoNot quite down to the hardware level, but the VPRI STEPS project had that kind of thing in mind, see (PDF): http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf The focus was on expressive power more than simplicity, though.
- CalChris 8y agoWell, remember what Carl Sagan said about full stack development: If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
- the8472 8y agohttps://xkcd.com/1123/ https://xkcd.com/1123/
- heyjudy 8y agoHave you ever implemented optimized microcode for a pipelined, branch-predicting processor that you also had to build? MICMAC is the architecture we used once upon a time. I won all of the course's extra credit for both smallest microcode program and fastest (fewest micro ops) because I Huffman-encoded the macro ops of the test programs and used progressive decoding. How about a Java to MIPS compiler? In C++ and then again in Java just to be self-hosting. Or an all software OpenGL-compatible pipeline with painter-algorithm Z-buffering and trapezoid engine? Quaternions and all that state... fun-fun. Another mandatory project in college was a non-pre-fork()ed select() caching HTTP/1.0 proxy in POSIX C89. IPC was a PITA back then. There are still bigger fish, but one can be that much less of dilettante by digging deeper and mastering the why, not the what or the current fashion.
- dragontamer 8y agoHeh, the people who can dabble in Assembly for a living won't be able to (typically) setup a major Web PHP + Database and all that. Assembly optimization is a different skill than web development, or other stuff in the stack. We all gotta pick our specialties. For me, low level high-performance stuff is more of hobby project level. I got a few cool things I've learned by myself but it isn't really what I do for a living.
- fxfan 8y agoI dabbled in assembly, for a living, at a major software firm. I can still do it after brushing up a bit. And I have no trouble setting up a pg database with web frameworks and writing optimized code. Web isn't some magical beast- its just rote programming. Actual business logic is where the categorization starts.
- amelius 8y agoIt's all plumbing and bookkeeping. If you want to be humbled, go to a conference on high energy physics.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chaotic_clanger 8y agosooo... where is SUSY .)
- freyir 8y agoThey've spent their lives studying high energy physics. It's going to seem impressive to a non-expert, but to them it's mostly plumbing and bookkeeping.
- Annatar 8y agoNot true at all; someone with the brains to understand how software works at the lowest level can figure out the higher levels easily, while the reverse apparently doesn't hold.
- nineteen999 8y agoI've always said "full stack" == "iceberg tip".
- freyir 8y agoThe author is a cultural anthropologist, if it makes you feel any better.