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Comment by have_faith | Hacker News Reader

The knowledge contained in the articles is very good but I got the feeling that it was written for an audience that already undertands the problems being solved. The Stack for instance is written in a language that only really makes sense if you've spent a lot of time with CSS and contains some extraneous paragraphs. I only mention this as the problems and solutions being explored are very valuable to learn but I think it could be written simpler and more succinctly so that meaning isn't lost for new-comers.

I'd be happy to contribute if it was open to suggestions.

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This kind of critique is applicable to all sorts of specialized writing. The flipside is that an article of this caliber (And it is indeed a very useful and well written set of guidelines for the intended audience) is not truly relevant to the layperson or an absolute beginner -- he lays out common problems and frustrations that people who've ever tried to layout a moderately complex website would have encountered, and presents some good solutions for them. If you haven't worked in the field and encountered these sort of problems, then an article like this is simply not relevant.

It is important for the field to be welcoming and open to curious individuals who want to learn, but there is also a very real need to have literature to communicate ideas that industry professionals encounter, and that necessarily implies some level of baseline knowledge. In other words, there are already plenty of resources to begin learning CSS, and not every article has to assume absolutely no proficiency in it. Every discipline of course has plenty of specialized writing. If you pick up a Quantum Mechanics paper, for instance, you'll find that it doesn't spend much time building up mathematical fundamentals like tensor algebra or topology even though it may well be required knowledge for someone to understand the paper.

Bear in mind the tutorial is prefixed "Relearn..."

Though I'd class myself as a "full stack developer" css for a long time was the 2nd class citizen, with most of my time spent on learning to use front end frameworks in their idiomatic way, the "it depends" peculiarities of SQL and RDBMSs and making inroads on the vast tomb that represents architectuliary sound back ends.

So an article focussed on improving my "it's only css but it works" knowledge is one of the best things I've seen on HN in quite some time :)

A good full stack developer should have double the salary of a frontend/backend developer. Do you find this is the case? You need to be an expert at both roles plus have a third skill connecting them together.

I think there's often a leeway given to the full stack dev that they have strengths and limitations. I haven't got to the point where I could compete with the true / good front end dev with my skills.

Even at the backend you have the application backend (c# or whatever) and then sql/rdbms. If you are that good perhaps you deserve thrice the pay by this logic ;).

Jokes aside, at the last good company I worked for where I knew other people's pay, I was compensated for the entirety of my skills compared to the good front end dev. We earned the same, and I was quite happy with that.

Jack of all trades...

I've been a backend developer for years and at times a frontend developer.

I've applied to a few full stack positions and the amount of specific knowledge in various topics they require seems much greater than either role separately.

When hiring or interviewing we tend to build up a big list of skills so the job looks impressive and attracts talent. Don't take the requirements too seriously.

Ideally the person doing the hiring is just measuring your knowledge. But I know many interviewers just try to eliminate candidates.

    A good full stack developer should 
    have double the salary of a frontend/backend 
    developer

There are (at least) two major reasons why this is not the case.

1. While theoretically possible, it's uncommon (and given the rate of change and increasing complexity of both front end and back end stacks, unrealistic) for a "full stack developer" to have expert-level production knowledge in both domains.

2. Even if #1 was true for a given developer, they wouldn't have double the productivity (and/or billable hours per week) as somebody who was more of a front-end or back-end specialist.

It's similar to the reasons why, in the medial world, general practicioners (aka "family doctors") do not earn money that is the... sum of all other medical professions earnings. They are generalists . Their role is to solve many problems, but also to refer many problems to the appropriate specialist.

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