Lawrence Lilley on Fullstack Development: Why Fullstack Development is an Idealistic Myth

Recently Lawrence Lilley, CTO at Mutual Vision, joined our Director of Tech and Digital, Manny, as part of our recent podcast mini-series on “Do Fullstack Developers Really Exist?”. You can catch the full podcast episode on a variety of podcasting platforms including Spotify, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

Do Fullstack Developers Exist?

Lawrence suggests that Fullstack Developers are a myth, or at the very least very few and far between and that the general concept of Fullstack Development is meaningless. 

How would you define a Fullstack Developer?

To truly be Fullstack, you would need to understand hardware, operating systems, virtualisation, containers and platforms as a service, scaling and scalability, package management, server management, databases and web management, configuration management and much more. And that’s before you get to the actual programming and business understanding. It’s impossible to have one person with a deep enough understanding of all that to add meaning to the term Fullstack.

Why Do People Use the Term Fullstack Developer?

Businesses are likely looking for Developers who are willing and opening to learn multiple disciplines and areas of software development rather than someone who is a Fullstack Developer. In other instances, businesses sometimes do not know what they’re looking for.

Building Effective Development Teams 

You shouldn’t just have a general team of Backend Developers and a general team of Frontend Developers. You should have teams of individuals with specialisms. So, you have one team with Frontend specialists and Backend specialists who then work together to build products and solve problems. Specialists across both disciplines should be present in a team.

The Future of Software Development

Lawrence predicts that there will be a bigger focus on core competencies in development teams, such as communication and teamwork, as well as more scrutiny over contextual competencies and being able to assess environment and solve scenario-based problems. Technical competencies will continue to be important.

Advice for New Software Developers

Focus on your value and work out how much value you can add to a business and focus on building literacy and proficiency rather than just skills.

Fullstack Development

Do you think Fullstack Developers exists?

Learn more about how realistic the notion of Fullstack Development is and the future of software development by listening in to our Trusted Tech Talks podcast, available now on Spotify, YouTube, and all other major podcast platforms.

Additionally, get in touch with Manny if you want to be involved in future events and podcasts.