
Fullstack Developer Is an Outdated Term - jonbaer
http://blog.honeypot.io/fullstack-developer/
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bsg75
It was never an accurate term either. A person who can simultaneously be
fluent and productive across the entire stack is a unicorn, mostly attractive
to penny pinching startups who themselves hope investors believe in unicorns.

~~~
jotato
"A person who can simultaneously be fluent and productive across the entire
stack is a unicorn"

That is a big sweeping statement to make. I have worked with a few people who
are great no matter the technology they are using. Being "fluent" doesn't mean
you have to know everything there is. Instead, if you understand the core
principles, how it operates, and a few nuances, you can usually figure
anything out without much effort.

I would say the real "unicorn" is someone who claims to know everything there
is about a technology.

Being able to confidently, swiftly, and accurately work across an entire stack
isn't rare. It is a skill you can learn.

~~~
bsg75
> That is a big sweeping statement to make.

It is, and it comes from having to deal with the results of so many people who
work on many things but are masters of nothing.

> Instead, if you understand the core principles, how it operates, and a few
> nuances, you can usually figure anything out without much effort.

What worries me about those where that is an expectation is solutions are
developed without in-depth knowledge, and that implies risk.

My most common example, is when experienced front-end developers without
equivalent back-end storage experience start to design things like databases,
and wind up with scaling and logical data corruption issues.

It takes more than core principal knowledge to develop _solid_ systems. This
is why every technical discipline other than software has specialists -
engineering (non-software), medicine, education. Software is no easier, and
given it evolves much faster specialization can be even more important.

