IMHO: The Mythical Fullstack Engineer

Right from my school days I've been involved in all layers of developing apps - assembler, C, Java, HTML, PHP, Django, databases, HTML/CSS/JS. Many years before this "full stack developer" popped up, I never thought being involved in all the layers of developing apps needs a name of its own. For me it was just being able to do both frontend and backend.

So when "full stack developer" roles first begin to pop up in the industry, it left me very confused. Why a whole new name for it? How exactly is it defined? Am I a full stack developer or am I not?

What drew me to software development was the desire to make things. It's not possible to make software worthy of today's audience without front-end, back-end and release engineering.

So if this person is saying "you can't make anything yourself[1]", that would be a sad situation.

For me, and I know this is common, my backstory goes like this: HTML -> PC building -> Photoshop -> graphic design -> web design -> CSS -> PHP -> JS & jQuery -> Node.js -> Mongo/Postgres -> Angular -> React -> React Native -> Heroku -> Docker -> Gitlab/CI/tests -> ArangoDB -> Kubernetes -> CDNs and lots more

I simply do what I need to do to make stuff. I've made back-end REST+WebSocket frameworks, cross-platform front-end component libraries, database ORMs and query builders, mobile apps published on the App Store, built CI pipelines for test and release, and configured containers, orchestrators and CDNs (which I programmed) for max availability. And I've lead teams in doing all these things.

Are my experiences "mythical"? No--but if you set your own standards or definitions when defining something you oppose, you'll often prove yourself right. While I've made route-finding systems and address search services, I honestly don't know some of the algebra about sorting algorithms. I learned as I went; and while I probably need more study and a little more time on new tasks than those who focus on a narrow aspect, I'm eager to do it.

In my pursuit of making stuff, what's expressed in this article won't stop me.

[1] Of course, nothing is made ourselves, we all rely on open source code, computers and servers.