Explained: What does a full stack web developer do? Why is the role controversial?

One big misconception, a full stack web developer is an empty title or someone like ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. So not true!

What skills a full stack developer must have or acquire? What are the core responsibilities? What programming languages full stack developers must know? 

Do you know the average salary of full-stack developer in US?

The average salary base is $105,556 / year – Indeed

A confusion raises as if they will be doing the development or management or responsible for handling the end product/service? Well, almost all of this and more. 

In this blog post, we will try to cover what is a full stack developer and what skills/role he has to perform in product/ project development in detail.

What is a full stack web development?

Someone who works on the backend (server-side), and the frontend (client-side). In short, someone who can play in a variety of coding niches either related to databases, web design or user experience, can guide in the best way possible. 

While looking into the responsibilities of the full stack web developer, he is the one who helps in the design and development of software. Test and debug software for optimization purposes, write clean standard code both for front and back end applications. He can design interactions on the web apps, build databases and servers for backend software running. Looks into cross-platform compatibility of applications, maintains the responsiveness of given design, research and can add new features in a product, develop APIs and RESTful services, reduce security risks and help in scalability. 

Why is the role of full stack developer controversial?

Often on LinkedIn, we see people putting their job titles as full-stack developers and it seems like a new job trend simply because the term has become an open-ended skill statement. What comes under it, and what not? We can’t really differentiate but every project requires different stack of technologies.

Like we mentioned earlier, they are also titled as ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. So, here necessary to look for is the real skillset for a full stack developer and not just an empty title.

‘A full stack developer is an engineer who can handle all the work of databases, servers, systems engineering and clients.’ Top-rated answer on Quora

One advantage of a full stack developer is that he can prepare your product prototype real fast and is more exposed to techniques, programming languages, products – hence they make getting into the market easier.

While some count this as a disadvantage, they may not know any framework ‘FULLY’. 

A checklist of roles and responsibilities of full stack developer

1-Master of essential front end technologies like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, has knowledge of 3rd party libraries like jQuery, LESS, Angular, ReactJS

2-Must know at least one server-side programming language i.e.Python, Java, Ruby, .Net etc.

3-Know vases database and cache technologies, MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, SQLServer, varnish, Memcached, Redis, etc.

4-Basic designing skills, prototype design, and UI/UX design.

5-Can handle Apache or nginx servers, a good background in Linux

6-Knowledge of Version Control Systems (VCS) helps in tracking changes made in a codebase. Knowledge of Git, for extracting the latest code, updating the existing code, or making changes

7-Well-aware of web services/ API, creation and consumption of REST & SOAP

8-Can write unit tests

9-Aware of automated processes for testing, documentation, and deployment.

10-Skillful in data structures and algorithms.

What programming languages full stack developers must know?

Full stack web developer must be proficient in a range of programming languages so that he can handle any project size or project niche. 

We can segment the programming languages into two groups. One for frontend and the second for backend languages. 

Frontend – JQuery, CSS3, HTML, LESS, SASS, Javascript, Angular JS, React JS etc.

Backend – Python, Java, Ruby, .Net, PHP etc.

Database – MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, SQLServer

Third-party libraries – Django, Python, Hibernate, Java Spring etc.

Full stack developers must be aware of web architecture, database management systems, Git, GitHub, REST and SOAP, fundamentals of design etc.

We tried to convey the idea. 

Final verdict

Full stack development skills cannot be acquired overnight or in a short span of time. Those are highly intelligent people with experience, that’s why their jobs are in high demand. Thus, this is a senior role who has knowledge of frontend, backend, and databases and the one who can look into systems administration (configuring, managing, and maintaining networks and systems).

Typically, a full stack developer is with 3-5 years of experience. Here at Phaedra, we have full-stack developers who have evolved with time and acquired the above-discussed skills.