“What is a full stack developer” is a question that mystifies non-programmers.\u00a0 I understand this because I run a content agency that pairs techies with non-technical editors.\u00a0 The term comes up, and those not steeped in tech kind of squint at you if you say that and ask, “what….?”<\/p>\n
So first, let’s give the short, direct answer to this question.\u00a0 A “full stack” developer is a software developer with a general enough skill set to build all required components for a working piece of software.\u00a0 They can handle the database, the programming logic, and the user interface, and they put it all together to deliver.<\/strong><\/p>\n In a nutshell, that’s what we software people mean when we toss around this term.\u00a0 But I can understand if you’re still scratching your head.\u00a0 You’re probably wondering about some things now.<\/p>\n For the rest of this post, I’m going to answer those questions.\u00a0 When you’re finished, you’ll know everything you could ever have wanted to know about the term “full stack developer” and some things about software development in general, besides.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the outside looking in, software probably seems kind of uniform<\/a>.\u00a0 You go learn to program and then you, well, program.\u00a0 Sure, there are different languages and stuff like that, but they’re all just kind of different flavors of the same thing, the way that there are all sorts of different makes and models of car, but they all get you around town.\u00a0 Right?<\/p>\n Well, not really.\u00a0 There are certain fundamentals that underpin it all, but there’s so much variance that you wouldn’t even recognize some of the deliverable work product as being the same thing.\u00a0 So rather than it being like different makes and models of car, think airplanes, submarines, and unicycles.<\/p>\n Some software developers build web interfaces like the one on which you’re reading this post.\u00a0 Others write extremely specialized code that lives inside your Fitbit and has no visual component.\u00a0 Still, others make animal sacrifices to keep 50-year-old mainframes running inside banks.\u00a0 (Alright, the sacrifice part might be a mild exaggeration.)<\/p>\n Because software is so specialized, there are software professionals that really couldn’t deliver a complete product on their own.\u00a0 If you build the logical guts of the Fitbit, you might not know anything about how to build the app on your phone that shows users the step counts.<\/p>\n And you probably also don’t know how to physically construct and fabricate the device.\u00a0 So your contribution could not, in fact, stand alone.<\/p>\n Thus, we have the difference between what I will, for now, call a self-sufficient generalist software developer and a highly specialized one.<\/p>\n You’ve probably guessed that our self-sufficient generalists are “full stack” and the specialists are, well, not.\u00a0 I guess they’re “half stacks” or “empty stacks” or something.\u00a0 The negative condition is actually not specified, so you and I are probably free to coin something here if we want.<\/p>\n But why “full stack?”\u00a0 Who reached into the deep, dark bowels of the weird naming barrel and yanked that one out?<\/p>\n Well, a “stack” is actually a really core concept in computer science<\/a>.\u00a0 But relax.\u00a0 Before you close the tab, it’s actually not hard to explain.\u00a0 Imagine that I stacked a deck of playing cards on top of one another.\u00a0 That’s a stack.<\/p>\n Seriously.\u00a0 That’s it.\u00a0 The last thing you place on the stack goes on top, and it has to be the first thing to come off.\u00a0 It’s a simple physical concept, and it’s a core and simple concept in the software world.<\/p>\n It’s so core, in fact, that we started applying it to other concepts.\u00a0 The various pieces of software that route messages around the internet are affectionately known as a network “stack.”<\/a>\u00a0 And the group of programming languages, frameworks, and libraries that come to make up developers’ toolboxes became known as their “stacks” in the same way that a tool belt became a generic metaphor for the tactics any professional of any kind can bring to bear.<\/p>\n So a “stack” of languages and technologies is the set of languages and technologies needed for delivering a software product.\u00a0 And a “full stack” developer is one that knows all of them.<\/p>\n Given the ubiquity of the term, especially coming from the mouths of recruiters, you might want to know how to become one.\u00a0 And that’s actually pretty straightforward.<\/p>\n If you’re not a programmer, the alphabet soup of technologies that go together might seem daunting.\u00a0 It might even seem random.<\/p>\n But it’s really not.<\/p>\n Spend some time in the industry and you’ll see patterns emerge.\u00a0 Software shops that bill themselves as “rails shops,” for instance, will use a pretty common set of languages and frameworks.\u00a0 Same with Java shops or .NET shops.\u00a0 There will be some variance, but you’ll see a core of common technologies emerge in the way that, say, food pairings do.\u00a0 There are a lot of foods out there, but similar combinations of them become recognizable as “breakfast,” for instance.<\/p>\n Once you’ve identified a stack and you learn some of its core techs, you’re almost there.\u00a0 At this point, you just need to make sure that you know a representative language\/framework\/tool for each common component of an application.\u00a0 At its most basic, this tends to involve a database (or another data storage mechanism), an application language (like C#<\/a> or Java), and some kind of user interface framework (e.g. one of the many Javascript frameworks available).<\/p>\n Once you know a group of these technologies and you have all of the components covered, you can safely call yourself a full stack developer.\u00a0 You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in all of them, either.\u00a0 You can be passable in some, competent in others, and maybe an expert in one or two.<\/p>\n\n
Software Development Is More Specialized Than You Think<\/h2>\n
What Is a “Stack” and What Does That Have to Do With Being a Generalist?<\/h2>\n
How Does One Become a Full Stack Developer?<\/h2>\n
After All This, Should You Want to be a Full Stack Developer?<\/h2>\n