developers…
I have had this conversation lately with several people I deeply respect: CEOs, CTOs, entrepreneurs, developers… The conversation is about developers. But what about? My friend Javier Escribano asked yesterday on twitter about what he should write today and I gave him this topic. I do not know if he will write about it, but since I like the topic, here are my thoughts.
When I started coding professionally (PwC Consulting year 2000) there was no difference (at least that I was aware, and have checked it with several colleagues) between frontend and backend. There was some kind of differentiation with systems administrator and database administrator. But that was mainly all. I do not even remember having QA teams. And I will not talk about the technologies, IDE, code repositories… we were using.
Things have changed and I do not know if for good or bad. I hate the term “fullstack” developer. But it is the closest to what we were doing years ago. I know “the stack” has changed a lot. Technology is moving very fast, and keeping up to it is very difficult. And I say this from my several years of not coding and trying to do it again (for fun). There are a lot of new frameworks, some languages are more mature, SAAS has grown a lot… but sometimes it feels like we are overcomplicating things. I love this article about JS (I am sure a new framework is being built or released as I write this). It reflects part of the frustration of people like me ;-) And I know there are a lot of great frameworks and solutions out there. I am not here to blame JS, or frontend developers. Backend developers are also making very complex things nowadays and I do not know if they are truly needed. Or devops vs sysadmins… is it truly conceptual or needed, or is it a way of saving money in 2 different engineers?
I really believe in the KISS principle. Things can get complicated as time goes by. I think that when you start a project/product from scratch you might want “fullstack” developer(s) and as it grows a degree of specialisation can be very beneficial. But not loosing contact/knowledge of the other side of the stack is crucial to not overcomplicate / overengineer your project/product. I have seem teams loosing that knowledge and it makes it difficult to advance.
At the end every company should find its way of doing things. Organisations are living creatures. They need to evolve in order to survive and advance. And that path is not unique. So find your path and have fun!
PS: I am listening to Turandot while writing this.
