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Comment by Borlands | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me front end developer and backend developer still works, although front end developer role evolved, can’t see a need for this extra long names.

Yes front end developers do more, than when the web was just html and tables, but that’s just evolution.

You want to focus on the UI only, UI developer fits. With complexity increasing, web developer title doesn’t make sense as it is too generic.

But backend, being it in java or node is a backend. I don’t see the need for this new categorisations.

I think the question arises from Fullstack term usage? fullstack front end and fullstack backend has been thrown around in job interviews, so fullstack alone without context doesn’t make sense: I don’t think it ever did.

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As someone who is generally described as fullstack the problem with the term is what stack is that? When you say you're fullstack there are so many variables that come into play that it is unlikely you are going to be able to just be dropped in and work with any company's stack. Your full stack is not theirs.

Eh, beg to differ. There is certainly domain knowledge to be had, but the underlying principles behind any particular layer of the stack tend to be more similar than different across languages and frameworks. Everyone needs a database, authN & authZ, network requests, state management, pretty forms, error handling, optimized images, etc etc.

Knowing how these layers work as concepts is a lot more important than deep expertise with a particular implementation.

From the perspective of a new hire, you'll spend easily as much time learning their idioms, mutations of the platforms, unique glue code and business logic as you will learning the platform.

this is true, but >you'll spend easily as much time learning their idioms, mutations of the platforms, unique glue code and business logic as you will learning the platform.

unless that is a trivial amount of time, which it generally isn't (and obviously can't be if you are expected to learn a new platform in the same amount of time to a level of reasonable proficiency), then the amount of time that you would devote to the learning it is probably not that worthwhile for the company to let you lose on the platform you don't know.

Of course my perspective is as a consultant, so if I'm brought in for 6 months and I do not know part of their stack it is just not worthwhile for me to learn that part of their stack, they generally want me to be productive on the parts of the stack I do know. If I was going to be at a place for some years maybe the motivations would change, but bigger places tend to optimize and specialize their developers and not want people to be "full-stack".

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