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You have a point, although it doesn't help that people consider the whole field of computer science as a single skill, so to them there's no difference between someone assembling computers and another working on machine learning, for example. It's all computery stuff, right? So it should be easy for you no matter what it is if it's related to computers in some way.
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Full stack for web dev is OK because they can't specialise. By the time they have enough experience to be specialists, the tech falls out of fashion anyway.
Web devs have opted for a world where they are eternal noobs. If you can only have noobs, then at least those who know a little bit of everything. -
This is so much true. I've had this thought and I concluded that we do have some kind of specialists in the industry.
Similar to how we have specialists such as a cardiologist, neurologist, radiologist, etc. among doctors, we have network engg, sysadmin, devops, back-end engg, front-end engg, data analysts, etc.
Similar to general physicians we also have full-stack engg and/or BAs who can code. -
The problem with specialisation in IT is that whatever tech you are specialising in will become obsolete in 3 years (1 year if it's web development).
If you want to use the medical field as an analogy, then you would also need to say that humans are changing rapidly, in backwards-incompatible ways, and all the medical texts written on humans are obsolete in 5 or so years requiring from-scratch learning abut the new state of humans.
As a developer you should never be married to a particular tool or technology, which means you need a broad understanding of how things work - hence "full stack" vs "peasant who can manually edit some markup" -
The only specialization you can actually make is being either all frontend or all backend. "Fullstack" as a concept exists but I do not think there is actually anybody who can truly call themselves that because even when you are fullstack you lean toward one side more than the other and like the other more. We should have like a mixture of first thing you are good at + second thing you are good at. Like frontstack and backstack :)
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@platypus congratz, you made me laugh so hard the other passengers are startled and ifgaf
The joys of being a full-stack web-developer...
Which type are you?
Devs regularly complain that our skills are not valued enough and that people think what we do is easy.
But, we don't really help the cause when we run around casually claiming to be "full stack" and not turning down work that clearly isn't in our area of competence.
We act more like Victorian amateur scientists.
Every seen a "full stack" doctor when you go to hospital? "Brain to feet---I can do it all."
OK, we have general practitioners, but they are really the BAs of the medical world. When it comes to getting into the weed, everyone specializes.
Full stack lawyer? "Hey, you did an excellent job of dealing with my house purchase. I've just been accused of murder. Can you represent me?"
While we continue to say that we can provide a high quality "full stack" experience I think we are signaling that this stuff *is* easy.
rant
full-stack
jack of all trades
cowboy coders
master of none