Stuck in 2010? Want to become a full-stack developer to print cash? Why would you waste your caffeinated energy on something that may not be worth it? Let’s talk about the ins and outs of full-stack development.
The history of the full-stack developer
In the early 1990s, everyone was a full-stack web developer by default; they could not even think about frontend and backend. It was around the 2000s when complex applications came into existence, and specialization in one thing was necessary. Around 2009, Node.js came and shook the world with the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node) stack. After that, we saw waves of frameworks, both for frontend and backend.
The Ocean of Web Development
First of all, the freelance market is not a great place for professional web development. I know you would not agree with me. I know that there are people who target a specific side of the web development cycle, but in number they are few. Everyone is trying to sell a goddamn React web development service. Security? hackers are showing kindness, to be honest. If you start digging deep on frontend, backend, ui/ux, or DevOps all at once, you are not learning anything. There are thousands of libraries to learn and practice in frontend development. There are thousands of concepts you need to learn about API. DevOps? You are finished. UI/UX? you shouldn’t compete with a graphic designer. You know how dumb that would be, right?
Too much to learn
Engineers are burned out. Reason? Too many technologies that companies are enforcing on these naive coders; they don’t understand the impact of learning new technologies on their mental health. Let’s be real here, you are not cool if you can learn a lot of technologies at once, because if you can read 100-page documentation a day, you are burned out! A company that hires too many full-stack engineers usually has a flawed product, at least that’s my experience.
How websites are cooked
Full-stack developers constantly change between frontend and backend; as a result, they don’t even realize they are making silly mistakes. When the deadline is tight, they start working on the backend without considering the UI/UX. Forget, the website running on iPad, it doesn’t work on mobile, where it is mostly needed. Even if the developer puts full attention on the product and tries to optimize, it won’t work. Because he had spent less time learning frontend than a frontend developer, and also he is not able to hold information of two brains in one.
Artificial Intelligence
So you expect me to say nothing about AI? I have to say something about AI because I need some attention. I don’t know if search engines and AI engines will give me some attention if I talk about AI in this post. The entire world is planning to catch AI early. Silicon Valley investors are throwing their generational wealth on this one technology, and its goal is to replace humans. Now, full-stack web developers have already lost their jobs for sure, but to whom? I would say to some burned-out freelancers who are willing to fix AI crap and make it a product. I haven’t seen a single product made perfect using AI. But a warning for full-stack developers is that the crappy MVP you developed in 2021 can be made using AI, to be honest.
I am sorry for all the grammatical mistakes in this article. This post is not written by AI. If you are used to reading AI content, that’s not my fault. I am a human and I make mistakes.