Hey again,

Your friend Mads here bringing you the weekly Top 3 in Tech picks. First an essay reflecting on the idea of "full-stack developers", followed by a cool browser extension and an article on using React to create websites. Buckle up:

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1. Full-stack development

If you're at all familiar with web development, you've probably heard the term "full-stack developer". A full-stack developer is someone who can operate (and is responsible for) both "ends" of the stack: the front-end, consisting mostly of HTML/CSS/JS, maybe with a framework; and the back-end, handling data storage, authentication, API design etc.

In a decoupled architecture, this division is very clear. Many companies have dedicated front- and back-end teams to handle the different tasks and responsibilities. Personally I consider myself a front-end developer, as I primarily deal with the fetching and presentation of data on a website, and not so much the data architecture, security etc.

But that then begs the question: if I create a website using WordPress (or any other CMS), does that make me a full-stack developer? Now I'm not only dealing with my usual front-end tasks, but can also make decisions on how data is stored and what content is exposed for the front-end to consume.

And what if my website is mostly UI focused, but uses a few serverless functions to add back-end functionality. Am I a full-stack developer now?

And what about someone using traditional MVC frameworks like Laravel, Ruby on Rails or Django? These frameworks combine models (data), views (HTML/CSS/JS) and controllers (business logic) in a monolith application. I'd say someone working with all these areas is a full-stack developer.

The only problem, at least the way I see it, is that it's incredibly difficult to be equally good at all parts of the stack. I believe that no matter what, you're gonna be better at one end of the stack than the other. That can make it difficult to hire / work with full-stack developers.

What if you hire 3 of them, and they're all great at creating slick API's, but none of them can make truly interactive and awesome front-ends? Or conversely, what if they're all immensely talented with HTML/CSS, but can only perform the bare minimum required for back-end development?

Now don't get me wrong. Amazing full-stack developers that are equally talented all around do exist, but they're exceptionally rare. And in my opinion, development is simply too broad of a field to be good at everything. At least until you're many years deep in your career.

If I was just starting to learn coding, and wanted to land a job as quickly as possible, I wouldn't strive to become a full-stack developer. I'd pick the area I like the most and get really good at that. That'd make me more hireable and I could always expand later.

On the other hand, if you're more of an indie-hacker / entrepreneurial type, you might focus on learning the necessities of the entire stack so you can build entire projects on your own. In this case, a framework like RoR / Django / Laravel is the perfect option.

As with most questions in development, there's no clear path that works for everyone. But I hope this reflection encourages you to find what works well for you, and then double down on that.

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2. Wappalyzer

Switching gears entirely - this next pick is a Chrome extension called Wappalyzer. It's a simple tool that lives in your browser and can be used to gain insight into what technologies were used on any given website. For instance, these are the tools and frameworks Twitter use:

It's a pretty cool way to get a quick glimpse into a website, especially if you really like a certain website's performance / animations etc. Then you can find out exactly what tools they used to create it 👌

​Check out the extension here​

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3. React for websites

The final pick for this week is an article. I've heard many people say stuff like "only use React/Vue for apps, not websites" or that "modern web development is too complicated!" or "what happened to just dragging a PHP file through FTP to create a website?"

The article confronts this narrative and suggests that using something like React for simple websites is perfectly reasonable. It's all about what makes sense to you, and what makes you most productive. And if that means using a modern front-end framework, then who's to say that's the wrong choice?

​Read the article here​

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Until next time,

Mads Brodt