Full Stack Developer

You might have heard the term full stack developer been thrown around by companies or recruiters.

Hopefully this will clarify it a bit if you have ever wondered what the term means or what it means to be a full stack developer.

To be a full stack developer means to do everything from the backend of the project to the frontend. In web development that might mean, planning the architecture of the project, coding the project, connecting the front end UI to the coding, doing the CSS styling, designing the database and testing and doing the cutups for the design. In some cases it might even mean doing the design.

Becoming a full stack developer might be a little easier in some countries that other. The reason for me saying that is that in some countries the company sizes are allot smaller than others.

When you start programming at a large company they might have you focused on back-end development specifically so you won't really get that much to do with the front-end or with the database, where in smaller companies, the teams aren't that big so you will be responsible for more of the tasks, like back-end, front-end and database. With that in mind, the chances are far larger of running into a full stack developer in smaller companies that in larger companies.

Now you might think to yourself, so what is the advantage of being a full stack developer?

The advantages are that you can more easily move on to larger roles when being a full stack developer. Being a full stack developer teaches you to see the bigger picture of the system being developed, thus making it easier to become a project leader or project manager on the technical side since you have knowledge of all aspects of development.

Some people like me are lucky, when I started as a junior developer 10 years ago, I was starting as a full stack developer. On the projects we worked on we had to do the database design, backend coding, frontend coding and implementation. So I learned all the languages required to do all those things and as time goes by and projects become more complicated you learn more about each language or aspect of the development process.

I know the whole idea of learning or knowing all those different aspects of the development process might sound overwhelming but it helps the development process as a whole if you know all the aspects of development even if there a multiple people working on different aspects of the same project.

In conclusion, being a full stack developer means you can have the idea, plan the idea, implement the idea and test the idea and so making an idea a reality.