> I've never met a perfectly competent "full stack engineer". Most seem to learn just enough to hack both together.
I hear you that there are plenty of "full stack devs" whose competency is mostly in one area.
But (at risk of sounding cocky,) I would consider myself competent on both the front and back end. And I'd say I'm not alone.
"Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." You just haven't been around these people. Frankly, I think this is more a statement about the industry as a whole than "full stack". There are a lot of gainfully employed but mediocre developers.
I think having both skill sets affords me the perspective to see whenever e.g. the front end is doing things the back end should be doing.
Sometimes specializing in one area means "you have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail." I've seen _way_ overcomplicated front-ends that would be a much lower long-term maintenance burden if the developer wasn't looking through "everything should be solved with client side JavaScript" tinted glasses. ;-)
Sure, I believe you completely. People are perfectly capable of writing great code in both. I think when it gets to errata, domain knowledge, errors, etc is where it really starts to open up. I can hit some opaque error and a good frontend dev can tell me what it means, or that it only exists in X browser, etc.
Similarly, some know about every Linux error code, and how to tune systems around applications, which is a bit of a lost art.
So sure, fullstack exists in a way, but I still find it too broad a concept for any human to master on both ends.
So sure, fullstack exists in a way, but I still find it too broad a concept for any human to master on both ends.
Like almost anything, it's just a matter of time and experience. Plenty of people in the industry have been around since the Web was young, and have watched the technologies evolve over the years. We've built UIs rendering on the back end and we've built UIs rendering on the front end. We've built back ends that talk to databases and we've built front ends that talk to an API that looks like a lot like a thin wrapper around a database. So many of the skills and so much of the domain knowledge in web development is useful, or at least potentially useful, on both sides of the HTTP divide that it's hard to see the front and back end as significantly different from this perspective.
Once you've got your fundamentals sorted out, the important things don't change very fast in this business. Much of the "rapid development" is just hype and reinventing the wheel, and every time a new generation of young and enthusiastic developers thinks they've discovered a radical, game-changing idea, which in time they will discover the old fogeys had been using since the last millennium. Again like anything else, with enough experience you can easily see through most of that, but also learn to pay more attention to things that might actually matter. This is true in front-end development, back-end development, usability and accessibility issues, databases, visual design...
To put this in concrete terms, if we say (just to choose a number) that someone reasonably conscientious with 3-5 years of professional experience behind them could be proficient with the technical details of current front-end or back-end development, is it really so implausible that someone with 7 years of professional experience behind them could not have developed and maintained similar proficiency with both?
> To put this in concrete terms, if we say (just to choose a number) that someone reasonably conscientious with 3-5 years of professional experience behind them could be proficient with the technical details of current front-end or back-end development, is it really so implausible that someone with 7 years of professional experience behind them could not have developed and maintained similar proficiency with both?
Yes. The world doesn't stop spinning so you can learn both. In the time you're focused on one, the other changes. Computer science fundamentals are going to be consistent, but the problem domains of front-end vs. back-end are vast. You can have skills from either, but ultimately either one is complex and wide enough that an individual focused on just one won't master it but merely be more than competent.
Also, just keeping track of the tech either side is discarding is enough to fill one mind. Keeping a pulse on useful best practices from multiple domains while the world races forward is no small feat.
The world doesn't stop spinning so you can learn both.
That is true, but the world seems to spin a lot slower from the right perspective. Most of the "progress" in web development really isn't. Game-changers come along every now and then, but much more rarely than hype. Someone who is already proficient with both front-end and back-end work can easily keep on top of the developments that actually matter.
Also, just keeping track of the tech either side is discarding is enough to fill one mind. Keeping a pulse on useful best practices from multiple domains while the world races forward is no small feat.
Yes, professional development takes work, and keeping up with technology requires some of your time. But once again, the more you already know, the less any given development is likely to make a profound difference to you, and the more quickly you can scan what's happening and focus in on anything of real interest.
For example, on the front-end side, I probably find one or two articles or videos per month that offer some genuinely new insight or understanding. I might find one or even two front-end tools per year that are sufficiently interesting to be worth investigating in more detail and potentially adopting for future work. It's not that I don't read or watch more than that, but I filter ruthlessly and rarely waste time on anything that doesn't have either an immediate benefit or obvious potential. This also means I usually haven't wasted much time on tech that didn't stick around for long.
Statistically speaking, I'm probably a more experienced developer than most here, but I make no claim to being unique or superhuman. I imagine there are others reading this discussion whose experience is not so very far from mine.
Unrelated, but there are plenty of people having above average knowledge that's good for real world use. Say 80% (if you define mastery as above 95%)
Aside from being a software engineer. I also have various hobbies that I cultivate with above average level, graduated from 3 degrees in unrelated field, and know three languages.
And I know there are plenty of people who do more than me.
It isn't a stretch by any means. I believe plenty of people are very capable than what they think they can do. Human capabilities are more able than you think. Little by little knowledge compounds. i.e. if you can play guitar well most likely you can pickup bass quickly.
I hear you that there are plenty of "full stack devs" whose competency is mostly in one area.
But (at risk of sounding cocky,) I would consider myself competent on both the front and back end. And I'd say I'm not alone.
"Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." You just haven't been around these people. Frankly, I think this is more a statement about the industry as a whole than "full stack". There are a lot of gainfully employed but mediocre developers.
I think having both skill sets affords me the perspective to see whenever e.g. the front end is doing things the back end should be doing.
Sometimes specializing in one area means "you have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail." I've seen _way_ overcomplicated front-ends that would be a much lower long-term maintenance burden if the developer wasn't looking through "everything should be solved with client side JavaScript" tinted glasses. ;-)