Full Stack Devs and Code Efficiency

Are you a full stack developer?

Does the server side of your stack consist only of Node.js and an ORM package? I hate to break this to you… but you’re not a full stack dev.

Sorry. Not Sorry.

Is that what the kids call a “hot take” these days?

In all seriousness, if someone claims to be a full stack developer, till recently this meant at the very least they had mastery of at minimum the following:

• One front end language and framework
• One front end language and framework
•  The ability to write SQL queries, including DDL, stored procedures and at the very least have some idea of the performance consequences of their SQL
• Knowing the difference between which to use and when

Look it’s great that we have higher level constructs and languages (and AI!) that make things easier and faster for us. That’s absolutely needed. 

But it’s also insane that we put a man on the moon with less compute power than your fridge. That today we need a veritable supercomputer just to look at cat pictures. 

A friend of mine always laments how his computer has become many orders of magnitude faster over the years but it takes longer than ever to open his editor…

Isn’t it time we started reversing the idea that the fastest (development time) or easiest way to do something is the best way? Even when I started working there was a trend that developer time is more valuable than machine time. Code inefficiencies are a reasonable trade off for faster delivery.

We keep going down this path and we’ll need nuclear power stations to run our smart phone. I’m looking at you #AI!  

Oh and stacks always make me think of pancakes 😊 Happy Friday all.