8 ms·

Fwiw, I’ve used all of those in my career, extensively here and there. I’ve written many thousands of lines of bash scripts. Even written my own php-for-bash-sc

by berdon 4y ago

Fwiw, I’ve used all of those in my career, extensively here and there. I’ve written many thousands of lines of bash scripts. Even written my own php-for-bash-script style code tags that support arbitrary shells. I’ve written my own log based distributed kv store, gone down the YouTube trail of writing my own db, gone through the angular and react iterations, deep dove in docker, docker compose, k8s, crds and custom handlers, and handled infrastructure via infra as code and with a control plane. I also have a wife and a 2.5 year old. It’s certainly possible if you don’t stop yourself.

necovek 4y ago
> I also have a wife and a 2.5 year old. You did all of these in the last 2.5 years? If not, that part seems a bit irrelevant. But regardless of the response, some kids are way easier than others (easy kids are those who like to eat and like to sleep, imho), and some parents have more help or stricter separation of parental duties.
mjmsmith 4y ago
Maybe he wants to spend more of his time with his wife and floating point child.
- elteto 4y ago
  My floating point children give me so much grief, they are all so irrational.
  - necovek 4y ago
    If they are proper floating point, they must be rational!
    - elteto 4y ago
      They’ll never be their true selves.
irskep 4y ago
Sure, you can do all that, but have you also written video games, UI frameworks, compilers, Twitter bots, localization tools, and web-based whiteboards? Have you ever made a music video or gotten a novel published? If not, why not? I'd say it's because you had different interests and spent your time elsewhere, which is completely fine and not a problem at all. People are allowed to have their own interests and explore the amazing world of technology in their own ways. It's weird to say that people aren't learning these things because they're "stopping themselves." They're just going in other directions. No one in my life has ever accused me of learning too few things and failing to learn by building things. Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent comment, sorry for the defensiveness here
- berdon 4y ago
  No whiteboard, music video, or a published novel yet. But, come now, his point was he’d never worked with a full stack developer and that they don’t exist.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    > that they don’t exist To my reading, that's not what was claimed. It seemed to be more like "they exist, but most of them turned out to be pretty shallow with each of the technologies".
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    As the sibling comment notes, yes -- my point was that the 2023 version of a "full stack developer" is distressingly shallow in most of the individual skills. I'll use myself as an example. I am a "full stack developer." I have fairly deep backend knowledge. But my React skills basically amount to the ability to make small JSX tweaks, and my sysadmin-y skills are also at roughly the same level. Conversely, the folks who are really sharp at front end technologies tend to write some psychedelically bad backend code in terms of scalability and maintainability. For some projects this admittedly doesn't matter. Some projects are simple and don't need to be wonders of engineering.
    - 4y ago
culopatin 4y ago
Good for you guys, but there is always someone doing more, always someone better, why start a pissing contest? You turned someone’s comment on why deploying SQLite is not trivial into an opportunity to tap yourself in the back so we can all say “wow look at berdon”, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
- berdon 4y ago
  You misunderstood my post - I was trying to make your point - there is always someone better. Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean others can’t.
JohnBooty 4y ago
I've dabbled in the whole stack as you've said. I've written a web framework, done some Docker, done some fun Javascript demos, shipped web and desktop code in a bunch of languages. Built and maintained my own physical servers back when that was a thing people did. Windows, Linux. Currently relearning C and 68K game development (at a glacial pace) as a side project. Did assembly language in college. Ran a business. Did everything from building the servers, the code, the marketing, the design, community management, merch, and event planning. Call it "ultra full stack," maybe? So yeah, it's extremely possible. But I'll also tell you bluntly I was only really good at a few of those things. Most of those things, I was bad at or perhaps more accurately I just acquired the bare minimal knowledge to get by in my specific and limited use cases. And many of those skills decayed quickly. I knew a thing or two about SEO and front end development in let's say 2000-2012 but those fields change fast and little I knew back then is relevant now. That's why I say that in 2023, I think the notion of "full stack developer" has grown untenable. You cannot be good (in the sense of shipping actual maintainable and performant production level stuff) at the entire stack simultaneously now that complexity at each level of the stack has multiplied relative to 2005 or 2015. For example, your own db -- is that a fun (and impressive!) hobby project or is that really production level stuff? To be ultra clear, I am not knocking what you have achieved. It sounds awesome and I suspect you have dived deeper into more things than I. Kudos, and I mean that sincerely.
- berdon 4y ago
  I heard a story that the inventor of python was once asked in an interview at Amazon to rate himself from 1-10 in python. The interviewer didn’t know who he was and it was just a standard question. He said 7. I don’t think you have to be a 10 to be a good. But you might need to be 10 to be exceptional. And I will agree that it would be very challenging to be a 7, let alone an 10, across multiple domains at the same time. Certainly, across months/years one’s focus might wander and thus their exceptionality might as well. Being able to adapt and pick up new things at a 7 level though - is the real FSD. But I see your point and agree with you about the shallowing of the FSD term.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago

by berdon 4y ago

necovek 4y ago

> I also have a wife and a 2.5 year old. You did all of these in the last 2.5 years? If not, that part seems a bit irrelevant. But regardless of the response, some kids are way easier than others (easy kids are those who like to eat and like to sleep, imho), and some parents have more help or stricter separation of parental duties.

mjmsmith 4y ago

Maybe he wants to spend more of his time with his wife and floating point child.

elteto 4y ago
My floating point children give me so much grief, they are all so irrational.
- necovek 4y ago
  If they are proper floating point, they must be rational!
  - elteto 4y ago
    They’ll never be their true selves.

irskep 4y ago

Sure, you can do all that, but have you also written video games, UI frameworks, compilers, Twitter bots, localization tools, and web-based whiteboards? Have you ever made a music video or gotten a novel published? If not, why not? I'd say it's because you had different interests and spent your time elsewhere, which is completely fine and not a problem at all. People are allowed to have their own interests and explore the amazing world of technology in their own ways. It's weird to say that people aren't learning these things because they're "stopping themselves." They're just going in other directions. No one in my life has ever accused me of learning too few things and failing to learn by building things. Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent comment, sorry for the defensiveness here

berdon 4y ago
No whiteboard, music video, or a published novel yet. But, come now, his point was he’d never worked with a full stack developer and that they don’t exist.
- justinclift 4y ago
  > that they don’t exist To my reading, that's not what was claimed. It seemed to be more like "they exist, but most of them turned out to be pretty shallow with each of the technologies".
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  As the sibling comment notes, yes -- my point was that the 2023 version of a "full stack developer" is distressingly shallow in most of the individual skills. I'll use myself as an example. I am a "full stack developer." I have fairly deep backend knowledge. But my React skills basically amount to the ability to make small JSX tweaks, and my sysadmin-y skills are also at roughly the same level. Conversely, the folks who are really sharp at front end technologies tend to write some psychedelically bad backend code in terms of scalability and maintainability. For some projects this admittedly doesn't matter. Some projects are simple and don't need to be wonders of engineering.
  - 4y ago

culopatin 4y ago

Good for you guys, but there is always someone doing more, always someone better, why start a pissing contest? You turned someone’s comment on why deploying SQLite is not trivial into an opportunity to tap yourself in the back so we can all say “wow look at berdon”, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

berdon 4y ago
You misunderstood my post - I was trying to make your point - there is always someone better. Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean others can’t.

JohnBooty 4y ago

I've dabbled in the whole stack as you've said. I've written a web framework, done some Docker, done some fun Javascript demos, shipped web and desktop code in a bunch of languages. Built and maintained my own physical servers back when that was a thing people did. Windows, Linux. Currently relearning C and 68K game development (at a glacial pace) as a side project. Did assembly language in college. Ran a business. Did everything from building the servers, the code, the marketing, the design, community management, merch, and event planning. Call it "ultra full stack," maybe? So yeah, it's extremely possible. But I'll also tell you bluntly I was only really good at a few of those things. Most of those things, I was bad at or perhaps more accurately I just acquired the bare minimal knowledge to get by in my specific and limited use cases. And many of those skills decayed quickly. I knew a thing or two about SEO and front end development in let's say 2000-2012 but those fields change fast and little I knew back then is relevant now. That's why I say that in 2023, I think the notion of "full stack developer" has grown untenable. You cannot be good (in the sense of shipping actual maintainable and performant production level stuff) at the entire stack simultaneously now that complexity at each level of the stack has multiplied relative to 2005 or 2015. For example, your own db -- is that a fun (and impressive!) hobby project or is that really production level stuff? To be ultra clear, I am not knocking what you have achieved. It sounds awesome and I suspect you have dived deeper into more things than I. Kudos, and I mean that sincerely.

berdon 4y ago
I heard a story that the inventor of python was once asked in an interview at Amazon to rate himself from 1-10 in python. The interviewer didn’t know who he was and it was just a standard question. He said 7. I don’t think you have to be a 10 to be a good. But you might need to be 10 to be exceptional. And I will agree that it would be very challenging to be a 7, let alone an 10, across multiple domains at the same time. Certainly, across months/years one’s focus might wander and thus their exceptionality might as well. Being able to adapt and pick up new things at a 7 level though - is the real FSD. But I see your point and agree with you about the shallowing of the FSD term.
- JohnBooty 4y ago