Fwiw, I’ve used all of those in my career, extensively here and there. I’ve written many thousands of lines of bash scripts. Even written my own php-for-bash-script style code tags that support arbitrary shells. I’ve written my own log based distributed kv store, gone down the YouTube trail of writing my own db, gone through the angular and react iterations, deep dove in docker, docker compose, k8s, crds and custom handlers, and handled infrastructure via infra as code and with a control plane.
I also have a wife and a 2.5 year old.
It’s certainly possible if you don’t stop yourself.
Sure, you can do all that, but have you also written video games, UI frameworks, compilers, Twitter bots, localization tools, and web-based whiteboards? Have you ever made a music video or gotten a novel published? If not, why not? I'd say it's because you had different interests and spent your time elsewhere, which is completely fine and not a problem at all. People are allowed to have their own interests and explore the amazing world of technology in their own ways.
It's weird to say that people aren't learning these things because they're "stopping themselves." They're just going in other directions. No one in my life has ever accused me of learning too few things and failing to learn by building things.
Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent comment, sorry for the defensiveness here
As the sibling comment notes, yes -- my point was that the 2023 version of a "full stack developer" is distressingly shallow in most of the individual skills.
I'll use myself as an example. I am a "full stack developer." I have fairly deep backend knowledge. But my React skills basically amount to the ability to make small JSX tweaks, and my sysadmin-y skills are also at roughly the same level.
Conversely, the folks who are really sharp at front end technologies tend to write some psychedelically bad backend code in terms of scalability and maintainability.
For some projects this admittedly doesn't matter. Some projects are simple and don't need to be wonders of engineering.
No offense and not here to toot my own horn, but just because you are better on one side of the stack doesn't mean that true full stack developers are unicorns.
Like others upthread, I am one of them, and probably because I've been paid to do this job for 16+ years.
Honestly my challenge is making potential employers understand that yes, I know my way around Elixir or React, as I do around C or Rust, as I do around sysadmin (not only DevOps) or DBA work, as I do around low-level system code. I'm no world expert at any of them, but most companies need a person that can wear many hats when things go crazy and specialisation is for insects anyway.
Sadly, generalist engineers like me have lost against the trend of "full stack developer" to have been stolen from us by recruiters and less skilled devs to now mean "can use Express and React and maybe deploy on Heroku".
I know my way around Elixir or React, as I
do around C or Rust, as I do around sysadmin
(not only DevOps) or DBA work, as I do around
low-level system code
To what level do you know these tools?
This is a challenging discussion because the idea of "knowing" or "being good at" a tool is so nebulous.
As I mentioned elsewhere I'm using a definition that is essentially, "the level of skill a solid engineer would acquire after working full-time with a technology for 1-3 years." Not world-class expertise necessarily, but enough time to surpass basic literacy and achieve a real fluency. To encounter edge cases and pitfalls and develop well-supported opinions about best practices.
If you have that level of fluency in all those tools, great! Sounds like you're pretty awesome. In my experience that level of mastery of the entire stack at once is exceedingly rare.
I've written C since I was 14 in 2001. I wrote a small operating system (up to reading and running a binary from ext2) around 2004 in C, so I know how a computer works at low level. I might still be able to write x86 assembly.
I've been a MySQL DBA full time for 3 years.
I've administered Linux systems since I was 14 in 2001, and for all my professional career.
Then there's Python, Go, etc.
Probably the one I know the least is React, which means I was PM on a React codebase for a short while, and spent way too much debugging weird issues with Next.js. I stopped paying attention post-hooks, since the frontend world changes too fast, and I'm getting old.
--
Again, this is not to toot my own horn, it's just that if you live and breathe computers, and hate doing the same thing for long (I blame my ADHD), over a long enough time you tend to have quite the repertoire. I think I'm quite average compared to other people that have been around as long.
You'll soon notice there doesn't tend to be anything revolutionary in computing. After your third framework and language, you'll keep finding the same ideas and concept with minor variations.
I'm also fairly generalist although my title is cloud engineer, and have all the skills listed by the OP + IaC infrastructure deployment and cloud stuff, as does everyone on my team. I think that's the trick; everyone on my team is responsible for everything, so we're constantly taking tickets in whatever we're weakest at and consulting each other, which causes really fast skill growth. I can see how it would seem impossible in a more siloed environment though.
> I know my way around Elixir or React, as I do around C or Rust
Interestingly, I find that I've never been asked to write anything in a compiled language yet. I've been wondering how I could work those skills into my job, but it seems like it doesn't come up much in the things I end up working on
Good for you guys, but there is always someone doing more, always someone better, why start a pissing contest? You turned someone’s comment on why deploying SQLite is not trivial into an opportunity to tap yourself in the back so we can all say “wow look at berdon”, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
I've dabbled in the whole stack as you've said. I've written a web framework, done some Docker, done some fun Javascript demos, shipped web and desktop code in a bunch of languages. Built and maintained my own physical servers back when that was a thing people did. Windows, Linux. Currently relearning C and 68K game development (at a glacial pace) as a side project. Did assembly language in college.
Ran a business. Did everything from building the servers, the code, the marketing, the design, community management, merch, and event planning. Call it "ultra full stack," maybe?
So yeah, it's extremely possible.
But I'll also tell you bluntly I was only really good at a few of those things. Most of those things, I was bad at or perhaps more accurately I just acquired the bare minimal knowledge to get by in my specific and limited use cases.
And many of those skills decayed quickly. I knew a thing or two about SEO and front end development in let's say 2000-2012 but those fields change fast and little I knew back then is relevant now.
That's why I say that in 2023, I think the notion of "full stack developer" has grown untenable. You cannot be good (in the sense of shipping actual maintainable and performant production level stuff) at the entire stack simultaneously now that complexity at each level of the stack has multiplied relative to 2005 or 2015. For example, your own db -- is that a fun (and impressive!) hobby project or is that really production level stuff?
To be ultra clear, I am not knocking what you have achieved. It sounds awesome and I suspect you have dived deeper into more things than I. Kudos, and I mean that sincerely.
I heard a story that the inventor of python was once asked in an interview at Amazon to rate himself from 1-10 in python. The interviewer didn’t know who he was and it was just a standard question. He said 7.
I don’t think you have to be a 10 to be a good. But you might need to be 10 to be exceptional. And I will agree that it would be very challenging to be a 7, let alone an 10, across multiple domains at the same time. Certainly, across months/years one’s focus might wander and thus their exceptionality might as well. Being able to adapt and pick up new things at a 7 level though - is the real FSD.
But I see your point and agree with you about the shallowing of the FSD term.
I think it highlights how difficult it is to even discuss these things. We're all using different definitions of "good" and "mastery" and "7/10" and "10/10".
Being able to adapt and pick up new things at a 7
level though - is the real FSD
This is a really interesting line of thought.
By my definition, I actually don't think this is possible, at least not for larger languages/tools/frameworks.
My reasoning is this. To be a 7 (my definition) requires time. You need to not just understand the basic premise and syntax of a language, but you need battle scars. You need to have shipped some code in that language, gotten familiar with the ecosystem of libraries, you've troubleshot production issues, and become familiar with common pitfalls and how to avoid them. You've checked out some large codebases in that language and gleaned best practices and things to avoid. You have probably also spent some time in that community, watched/attended presentations from recognized leaders, and have a sense of which way the wind is blowing.
Everything I just described takes time. I don't think even the smartest person in the world can drop in and achieve that immediately unless we're talking about a relatively simple tool.
I mean, could somebody who already knows CSS pick up TailwindCSS and be a 7 quickly? Absolutely.
Could an engineer who is new to Ruby/Kotlin/Python be a 7 quickly? Not by my definition, not by a longshot. In my experience, seasoned developers drop into existing codebases in these sorts of languages and make a mess of things at first until they get used to the ecosystem.
You did all of these in the last 2.5 years? If not, that part seems a bit irrelevant.
But regardless of the response, some kids are way easier than others (easy kids are those who like to eat and like to sleep, imho), and some parents have more help or stricter separation of parental duties.
I also have a wife and a 2.5 year old.
It’s certainly possible if you don’t stop yourself.