Ask Slashdot: Are 'Full Stack' Developers a Thing?

"It seems that nearly every job posting for a software developer these days requires someone who can do it all," complains Slashdot reader datavirtue, noting a main focus on finding someone to do "front end work and back end work and database work and message queue work...." I have been in a relatively small shop that for years that has always had a few guys focused on the UI. The rest of us might have to do something on the front-end but are mostly engaged in more complex "back-end" development or MQ and database architecture. I have been keeping my eye on the market, and the laser focus on full stack developers is a real turn-off.

When was the last time you had an outage because the UI didn't work right? I can't count the number of outages resulting from inexperienced developers introducing a bug in the business logic or middle tier. Am I correct in assuming that the shops that are always looking for full stack developers just aren't grown up yet?
sjames (Slashdot reader #1,099) responded that "They are a thing, but in order to have comprehensive experience in everything involved, the developer will almost certainly be older than HR departments in 'the valley' like to hire."

And Dave Ostrander argues that "In the last 10 years front end software development has gotten really complex. Gulp, Grunt, Sass, 35+ different mobile device screen sizes and 15 major browsers to code for, has made the front end skillset very valuable." The original submitter argues that front-end development "is a much simpler domain," leading to its own discussion.

Share your own thoughts in the comments. Are "full-stack" developers a thing?

Comments

Developers always have core strengths and weakness

[CraigCruden]

Yes, there are full stack developers but as with any developer they may know how to code the full stack -- but they will typically be substantially stronger as a server/ messaging / or UI developer and thus much weaker on the other side. It is always better to have people that have a full understanding and the ability to step in if required (especially as you become more senior) of the full stack. If you have people that are purely silo developers - then you will often get into situations where your UI developer wants the server to take responsibility and your server thinks it is too frivolous for them and should be done in the UI.

"Full stack" developers come from "boot camps"

[whoever57]

I know someone who has a liberal arts education (all the way to PhD) and then went to one of these coding boot camps. She now describes herself as a "full stack" developer, despite very little training and experience in the field.

Yup, me.

[Space cowboy]

I am older, as the summary suggests - I'll be 49 this year, but these days I do:

• verilog code on the FPGA, which talks to the
• embedded micro (If there isn't one in the verilog or a hard macro on the FPGA), which is controlled by
• the board-management micro, which talks to
• the thunderbolt or lightning connector, which needs a
• custom PCIe driver kernel extension on the host box (Mac or Linux), which wants a
• user-interface library that applications will use to talk to the kext, and I provide a
• GUI or shell app that exercises the hardware, and sometimes a
• Full-blown application with complex threaded user-interaction which often needs
• GPU accelerated display routines, which often use
• OpenCL or Cuda routines for the heavy lifting

I don't think of myself as a "full-stack developer", I just think of myself as a developer. The goal is to solve problems, the more tools you have at your disposal the better.