3 Reasons NOT to Become a Full-Stack Developer
3 Real-life reasons to sweep aside thoughts of becoming a Full-Stack Developer.
Let’s have a thorough and truthful discussion about becoming a Full-Stack or so-called “self-centered Web Developer”, which many of the tyros really don’t know what it really means or what’s involved. Moreover, nowadays, there are numerous online courses that offer Boot Camps and are selling Full-Stack programs.
Let’s start with some misunderstandings around Frontend, Backend, and Full-Stack web development, and following that, we’re going to go into why you shouldn’t aim to become a Full-Stack Developer?
What is Frontend Development?
Simply put, the frontend is the UI, or User Interface for websites, web apps, native mobile apps, and hybrid applications. To become a frontend developer, you need to have some insight into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, where HTML is the base or presumed markup language of a webpage, CSS for adding styles, and the main programming language (JavaScript) for adding extra features and making the webpage active.
According to the complexity of the project, the frontend is going to be integrated with different third-party frontend libraries and frameworks to handle various parts of the application. There are tons of them out there; to name some of them, you’ve got React, Angular, NextJS, Lodash, Anxios, and the list goes on…
Accordingly, the frontend communicates with the back-end and receives data through HTTP requests and Web Sockets.
What is Back-end Development?
The back-end receives data updates from the frontend UI and afterwards updates the database, or, to put it differently, the back-end returns data for the UI to display. Moreover, back-end development has a vital rule in a web app: the frontend code is accessible to everyone in the browser, so we have to treat it like it’s always vulnerable and is always going to get compromised. The back-end developers will use specific methods that ways that will act as gates to protect the database from being compromised.
Back-end developers use different programming languages, and their APIs are usually going to be split into microservices, where one could be written in Java, another in Scala, another in JavaScript in Node.js, or some other programming languages.
Full-Stack Development
As the name suggests, a Full-Stack developer can handle both frontend and Back-end tasks by its own (no need to recruit second dev). Despite their knowledge of Back-end and Frontend development, they know much more, which means knowing multiple ways for bundling code and deploying the application.
Bear in mind that a lot of jobs in the market for Full-Stack development can be a bit misleading, and we will review that in a minute. But in truth, Full-Stack jobs are going to be at smaller companies on tighter budgets. These companies want to get as much out of each person as possible, so in addition to doing the stuff we just mentioned, a Full-Stack developer is probably going to do a lot of DevOps, like managing infrastructure, which is something that’s going to be handled by somebody else at a larger company.
So why you shouldn’t become a Full-Stack Developer?
Reason 1.
Most jobs listings cast a wide net of requirements that often don’t actually match the specific needs of a particular team. For instance, when I asked a friend of mine who is working as a frontend developer at Adobe some questions about this, he responded that he was also a Full-Stack developer when applying for a frontend position. And for clarification, He added that in effect, a Full-Stack developer can apply for both positions (Frontend and Back-end), but the only problem you’ll face after securing or maybe even the cause of rejection, will be that you’re not specialized in one field, and that happened to himself as well; as he was working as a frontend developer in a team with the entire focus on frontend.
To break it down for you, if you’re not specialized in a field of need, then there’s a high chance that you’re not even going to get the job offer. And this could be one of the drawbacks of taking that Boot Camp with damn 60+ hours of video contents that teaches everything (Frontend and Back-end) in a breath.
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Reason 2.
Back-end developers are the guardians of a company’s data, and they’re one of its most valuable assets. A lot of companies are going to be reluctant to hire a new Back-end developer because it will be super easy to mess up the databases. Mess-ups can cost a lot of money and can completely destroy their reputation, so it’ll be difficult to convince them that you’re confident enough to do the job, and because you’re a Full-Stack developer, which includes Back-end, you’re going to inherit a lot of those concerns.
Reason 3.
A specialist who becomes superb at some niche of software development usually makes more money than someone who is generalist because companies that can afford to pay well want someone who is an expert in something.
Final Thoughts
Now, money is not everything, and some developers enjoy being a Full-Stack developer (as I do), and there’re nothing wrong with that, and if becoming a Full-Stack developer is your goal, that’s phenomenal; keep it up. But as I mentioned above, becoming a FULL-STACK developer requires time and dedication so that you become an expert in both Back-end and Frontend.
So what I want to suggest is that you go deep into one area and the go broad. Master Frontend development, and I’m sure you will stick with it. After you’ve felt yourself The Master of Frontend and contributed to many existing open-source projects, you can slowly but surely step into Back-end by building projects and mixing your Frontend skills with Back-end so you don’t forget Frontend as you try to dive into Back-end.
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