LinearArrayFull Stack Programmer Doing Frontend
Dr. WeskerI can’t be the only person who thinks “full stack” translates to “master of nothing.” One of the best career moves I ever made was shrug off the pressure to go full stack, and dedicate myself to backend only.
ImWaitingForRetconsIn my case, it was to increase the number of available job opportunities rather than any genuine interest.
FalI think knowing about frontend is important for a senior or higher level engineer. I would expect someone at that level to be able to contribute where necessary, and know enough to make sane decisions and know when those decisions impact backend/frontend. But to be equally good at both isn’t reasonable
A backend engineer that has adequately put in the time to operate at a senior level, will more than likely have worked closely enough with FE to check those boxes. They should be familiar with technical design and processes, which if done effectively, teach an engineer to ask those questions.
Ethan“I’m capable of not making a fool of myself with UI” does not equate to “I’m a full stack developer”
Full stack means we do it because nobody else will.
I feel seen.
I might get that sentence embroidered on a pillow.
You don’t have to be a full stack dev for that to happen to you
No, but when it does happen, you’ll probably turn into one.
When it happens? That happened to me a long time ago. I’m still a backend developer. I can create UIs and I can spin up and manage docker CI infrastructure but I sure as hell don’t want to. A properly run company team should have separate professionals for UX, front end, back end, sysadmin, etc. Just because I am capable of doing those things does not mean I should.
DreadPotatoJust because I am capable of doing those things does not mean I should.
This is the crux of why so many companies, especially “smaller” ones, are a hot mess. capable of << good at, but of course it’s cheaper to just get johnny to do everything.
No shame on focusing on one, but someone in the organizational chain needs to understand how both sides of the machine the work.
As someone who likes to dip their toes into everything, I feel a bit called out by “master of nothing”.
My apologies. My intention wasn’t a dig at engineers themselves, but rather the trend of employers seeking “full stack” engineers, and the implications of them shopping for a singular engineer willing to do the job of multiple engineers-- IE be taken advantage of, and the first to be let go, because of a lack of specialized domain knowledge, etc.
No worries. Wasn’t really offended. ;)
Fuck that employer behavior, though.
It just means he can’t do it by himself.
Yours won’t be perfect, but you can do the whole thing by yourself.
Why would I want to do it by myself, in a professional team setting?
The truth is that there is value in both a generalist and a specialist.
My company started with full stack devs only and we’ve transitioned to specialized back end and front end since we realized that 1 specialized BE Engineer and 1 specialized FE Engineer can work faster with better quality than having 2 Full Stack Engineers.
Thank goodness issues respect the FE/BE break out.
I sometimes wish my employer didn’t know that I can write Python code, so that they wouldn’t ever assign me front-end work. I prefer to deal with programs that take lists of numbers and return lists of other numbers.
(I’m not as bad as one guy I used to work with. His backend code only took binary-encoded configuration files for no reason I can think of except maybe to punish anyone except himself who tried to use it.)
Who is using python for frontend?
Flask and django I assume
DichotoDeezNutzIsn’t that backed code? Unless your using templating…
You could do templating with jinja, or do some data visualization with bokeh. I think there’s also something called dash. I don’t know much about any of them though.
definitely not what people are talking about when they say front end though
muntedcrocodileIf flask is frontwnd then im a full stack developer and definatly not some little code monky server raw html forms written by chatgpt with normatting.
ℍ𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕪Using streamlit works suprisingly well for frontend
There’s pytermgui for cli.
I’m terrified by this binary config file. Why?! Was he writing C and said “fuck it, memcpy”?
TroyI mean, python has pickle and people use that to store config. It’s a weird practice, and totally unsafe, but it works well enough. This wouldn’t be that different.
As a fullstack developer I don’t appreciate you calling me out like this. Write an efficient SQL query you framework monkeys.
But also, this is very true.
DROP TABLE
That seems like a pretty efficient query!
I see you’ve met my boy Bobby
astraeusI hope you’ve learned to sanitize your inputs
Where’s my trusty CASCADE?
Not understanding SQL (and in some cases NoSQL DBs) and the underlying database are a reason that so many full stack devs suck. Just because they use an ORM, they think they database work is magically solved, until they realize it’s just doing what they’re telling it to do and their lack of DB understanding has created an awful database structure. And then a DBA comes in, and then the entire ORM layer has to be scrapped because it’s trash, so on and so forth. A full stack engineer doesn’t have to be a DBA, but they sure as hell need to know what the ORM is doing to their data they are CRUDing
And then a DBA comes in
I’m convinced that’s a mythical being. In my 20+ years of experience I’ve never encountered one.
They don’t write sql they just use some god awful orm or cram it all into a nosql db.
SickdayIn my experience, that bottom image equally applicable when Front End devs go Full Stack lol
Yeah, it’s accurate both ways
Frontend dev here, can confirm. Last week I had to look at some Java code and was instantly greeted by some AbstractFactoryBuilderImpl. Nightmare fuel if you ask me.
Both should be the bottom picture to be honest.
If you hear ‘full stack’, run. What I was told by a fellow student, while I was writing my thesis (paraphrased).
It may suggest the company doesn’t want to hire the appropriate amount of engineers, with the appropriate expertise, and instead want a mule. It also may suggest that product quality is a low priority.
KeriKitty (They(/It))Came here to ask if I’m the only one grossed out by the term “full stack” and its exploitative implications. Thanks for explaining why :3
Hey, maybe they make up the difference in “exposure” or something! That’s a well-loved way to ask for free/underpaid work!
I love shitting on Fullstack devs as much as the next guy. However, sometimes it really just does make sense for an (often internal) product maintained by a one-person team, and it doesn’t have to mean that the organization doesn’t value them. I’ve seen it happen.
However I would not recommend it as a career path because it’s essentially impossible to tell what you’re getting into when you get hired. Could be what I just described, could be that you inherit the full responsibility for a 20 year-old perl+php5+xhtml+angularJS mess.
I think it can only truly make sense if you work independently and get to build projects to your own quality standards, assuming you manage to find a “scope is small enough that specialization doesn’t make sense” niche. This is very hard which is why in practice “full stack” tends to mean “master of none but good enough to get a product out the door cheaply”.
(des)mosthenesthis is what starter kits are for lol
RonSijmBackend Requirements: “When x,y goes in, I want x+y to come out!” - Okay
Frontend Requirements: “Well it needs to be more user-friendly, and have this rockstar wow effect” - Yea wtf are you even talking about? You want me to add random glitter explosions, because I found a script for that, that’s pretty ‘wow effect’ right?
Actually the front end stuff is more like “we need to make the ‘sign in’ button bigger. No one can click it because it’s tiny, and it’s in German.”
KairuByteIsn’t our main audience German? If you wanted non German stuff you shoulda asked for regional translations. Not only is that a change request, but you’re gonna be pushing the release window by months.
But it doesn’t even say “Sign in” in German. It says “Das Bootton” because someone thought it would be funny and never changed it.
That someone was RIGHT!
Marketing want us to add more typos to make the site feel more “friendly”.
As a SaaS founder I’m now wondering if this actually works. Will have to talk to the front-end devs on Monday.
Please don’t
Plese donot
I spent years as a mobile developer and the thing that always drove me the most nuts was being handed a software design with lots of tiny buttons that were nearly impossible to tap with a finger. I generally implemented the UI by increasing the size of the tappable regions (without increasing the apparent size of the buttons) making it actually usable, but one time the designer discovered that I was doing this and went apeshit and convinced the project manager to undo all this and make the tappable regions the same size as the buttons. The grounds for ordering me to undo this was that implementing the larger tappable regions would take too much extra time - despite the fact that this had already been done and it took additional time to undo it.
So wait you actually had to undo it all? What kind of designer would make mobile buttons small?
I usually just do what they requested and when they come to complain I just tell them “well, you’re the one who requested this” and pull up receipts. My DM to myself on Slack is filled with screenshots and links to confirmations for bullshit requests that the product team made.