20 Comments

1. April 12, 2015 at 6:24 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Stack Overflow:
   Stack Overflow user survey: 92% male, 41.8% self-taught, 54.5% use Javascript, 32.4% are full-stack web developers, 9.1% mobile developers

   2015
   Developer Survey
   http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015

   Reply
2. August 31, 2015 at 12:19 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Increase Your Engineering Value in Just 20 Minutes a Day
   http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1327556&

   Twenty minutes is how much time commercials fill in an hour-long TV show. Why not take 20 minutes a day to increase your value as an engineer.

   In my latest quest to improve your abilities as an engineer, I explained how to create prototype circuits at home. As I was developing my own prototype, I went through my storage unit to pull out some of my parts and reference boards. This encounter produced some gems from my past that inspired me to write a blog about increasing your overall value as an engineer.

   My goal is to increase your value in only twenty minutes a day.

   Bettering your engineering skills involves both the physical circuit evaluation and solving equations. As it turns out, you can probably do both for an investment of under $100. Really?

   I’m a power engineer. I’m expected to 100% efficiency at no cost. Of course you’ll settle for high efficiency at some cost.

   Solving equations is a great way to improve your value. The time spent designing in most engineering jobs is 5-10%. Or at least that was my experience at larger corporations. That number increased at startups but not much considering I developed web pages, marketing plans, business plans….etc. With such a little amount of time invested, you can quickly lose your skills. This happened to me when I decided to go back to graduate school after three and a half years in industry.

   How to Increase Your Engineering Value in Just 20 Minutes a Day
   http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=3319&doc_id=564035&

   As for the physical part of improving your value, life is so unfair. Components have shrunk to the point where us fifty somethings can’t even see the darn things. Further frustrating you is the inability to get a scope probe on the lead let alone hook it with the probe. As a final blow, who wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars outfitting a lab? Fear not my friends. El Cheapo to the rescue.

   The best way to solve the dilemma of the physical circuit is to invest in the old style plugin breadboard with leaded components. I know what you’re thinking, good luck finding one and then purchasing the components individually let along finding leaded ones.

   My solution for a physical lab platform is in the form of the Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab
   Prior to financial strangulation by divorce and cheaper labor, I intended to get one of these for each of my sons.

   Perhaps you are thinking, “Big deal getting me a thirty dollar circuit that I have to analyze with a kbucks silly scope.”

   As it turns out, there are several smartphone applications such as Oscilloscope Pro (See Reference 6) which turn your phone into an oscilloscope. Perform a google search and you will find both Android and iPhone applications to suit your needs. Just remember, there are voltage limitations to adhere to unless you wish to fry your phone.

   Like oscilloscopes, digital multimeters (DMMs) have really come down in price. Walmart has DMMs (See Reference 8) for under $10.

   In addition to smartphone-based oscilloscope applications, you can find some neat little signal generators too. Some versions have PWM capability.

   Reply
3. November 2, 2015 at 10:27 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   ‘T-shaped’ developers are the new normal
   Don’t go chasing waterfalls
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/02/t_shaped_developers_are_the_new_normal/

   When I joined QA nearly eight years ago I did so in a time of wonderfully ordered roles and responsibilities. It was a world of web developers, designer, application programmers and database administrators. Each sat in their own little area worrying about only their little part of the puzzle with clear definitions of responsibility.

   This venerable model heralded the age of web and app development, but it also contained the seeds of its own destruction, creating a world of silos, isolated and closed knowledge – a world of “not my problem”.

   As these complex systems have matured the effort, and the risks, to change a product have become significant and difficult to achieve. As this era, and the solutions built around it, draws to an end, something new awaits.

   The modern developer requires clear methodologies to work with, a supportive organisational culture and tools that automate the simple tasks. This cultural change does not just apply to software developers – business leaders drive this change and provide the tools for their organisation to thrive.

   With Windows 10 comes the end of the full product upgrade – from now on small iterative changes will be the norm

   A more agile way of working

   The Agile, Lean and DevOps movements are the cornerstone of the new generation of developers. Technologically adept professionals want the ability to self-manage, define priorities and work in a fluid way.

   Agile allows us to create efficient metrics, openness and accountability.

   Lean allows us to explore the work that has gone before, destroying bottlenecks in our systems. The new upstart DevOps use tools and organisational change to create scalable services and products, taming change and integration, where all stakeholders are expected to understand part of each other’s role.

   This is the world where every problem is your problem. To succeed the team needs everyone all in, sharing responsibility, success and failure.

   Work like a ninja

   To achieve this way of working you need a more rounded IT professional, or what the industry refers to as T-shaped developer. A T-shaped developer has one or more deep skill-sets of knowledge complemented with broad generalist knowledge across an entire solution.

   Sometime known as full-stack developers, these rounded individuals are the most in-demand devs – in a modern world that wants staff who can do front end, can make middleware sing and utilise the terminal on their chosen operating system like a ninja, and knows how to test.

   Almost all of these new devs work in the world of open source – the closed shop shrink-wrapped products of the Microsoft and Adobe heyday draws to a close – and public open source solutions, software and services rise to replace them. The developers of today cut their teeth on Linux and OS X and they use languages like SCALA, Python and Ruby, instead of .NET and Java.

   Rapid change

   This phase of machine-led, digital development is one of rapid change – many organisations are conducting root and branch reviews across their entire skill set.

   Reply
4. November 16, 2015 at 12:24 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Tips to get funding for your IoT product idea
   http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440828/Tips-to-get-funding-for-your-IoT-product-idea?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&elq=74710de12abe4c128ce1c3aaeded0962&elqCampaignId=25729&elqaid=29300&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0a8477667da0442fa30d62c5d2acf57c

   At ARM TechCon 2015, Eric Klein offered his perspectives during a keynote on what venture capitalists are looking to fund in IoT as well as some of the technology challenges that are slowing down innovation. Klein is a partner in Lemnos Labs, an early-stage hardware investment fund based in San Francisco, CA.

   Klein shared what ideas have been overdone in the consumer market: smart watches, step counters, smart home hubs, thermostats, and anything that helps you grow “food” in your homes. Frankly, venture capitalists (VCs) are looking for new ideas in the consumer market.

   So what kinds of ideas are most likely to get funded? Products for the industrial/enterprise market are very appealing to VCs. Klein shared what is getting VCs excited in the IoT industrial/enterprise market saying, “Businesses will pay for efficiency gains.” He gave an example of a waste management company that could reduce its fleet of trucks by 1/3 just by adding sensors to dumpsters. Klein added, “There are multi-billion and trillion dollar opportunities still untapped.” These are the kinds of products that VCs are getting behind—ones that can significantly drive down costs and/or add revenue opportunities. Another reason to consider a product in this market: enterprise and commercial companies have money to pay for your product.

   Klein closed his talk with a list of what VCs look for in the projects they fund:

   Team, team, team: smart passionate folks who believe in the idea so much it is contagious
   Understanding of the target market value chain: what part of the dollar are you going to get
   Proven ability to create a physical product and complex systems: what have you made
   Plan to get to profitable unit economics: have a clear path to opportunity

   Perhaps the biggest challenge to the IoT entrepreneur is not the “big idea” or even funding, but instead it is the lack of toolkits to help link the IoT device into a network, analyze the data, and keep it secure. IoT entrepreneurs are forced to become network, data, and security architect experts. “Without these tool chains,” Klein said, “it’s no wonder why they fail.”

   Reply
5. November 17, 2015 at 8:07 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Are You a Superprogrammer?
   http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=182&doc_id=1328277&
   Unless we have a quantitative understanding of our profession it will be more art than science.
   http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/4440844/Are-you-a-superprogrammer-
   “Good” is a hard metric to define. Is it lines of code per hour? Is it completed projects per year? What about defect rate?

   Reply
6. December 8, 2015 at 7:51 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   The full stackoverflow developer
   https://www.christianheilmann.com/2015/07/17/the-full-stackoverflow-developer/

   Full Stack Overflow developers work almost entirely by copying and pasting code from Stack Overflow instead of understanding what they are doing. Instead of researching a topic, they go there first to ask a question hoping people will just give them the result.

   Reply
7. December 8, 2015 at 7:51 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Does the Internet Make You Stupid?
   http://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/does-the-internet-make-you-stupid/

   A recent post by [Christian Heilmann] is one of several I’ve read lately talking about how Web sites–Stack Overflow, in particular–are breeding a new kind of developer. The kind of developer that simply copies and pastes example code or schematics with no real understanding of what’s going on. His conclusion is that developers who don’t fully understand what they are doing will become disinterested and burn out. He’s talking about software developers, but I think you could extend the argument to developers of all kinds, including hardware hackers. He concluded that–at least while learning–you stick to the old ways of doing things.

   There’s two things that are slightly different today: First, everyone has easy access to lots of examples. You don’t have to go find a book (possibly at a library), search through it, and find one or two examples. A quick Google will find dozens or hundreds of examples.

   The second thing that is different is that there are places exist like Stack Overflow where you don’t even have to go looking. You can simply ask, “How do I do X?” and you will get answers from someone. It might be wrong. You might not understand it. But you’ll probably get some kind of answer.

   I suspect the hacker community does this less than the general population. We want to build our own things, even when it sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. ​But even so, most of us draw the line somewhere. Do you really want to develop a BSP and port Linux to every board you build, or do you buy a Raspberry PI or BeagleBone?

   However, if you don’t have that hacker mentality–and not everyone doing hardware and software development today does–grabbing something off the shelf is a big win. In the workplace, in particular, this is encouraged even though it isn’t always the best idea. I think the problem is we are in a period of transition. The Internet has fundamentally changed how we work, but how we teach people hasn’t fully caught up.

   Being an engineer or designer or creator years ago meant you had to know how to solve tough problems. Sometimes that took research and part of that skill was knowing where you had a high likelihood of finding information on a particular topic. Being a research savvy problem solver (and a hacker, by our definition of the word, nearly always fits that description) still has value, of course. But it isn’t as valuable as it used to be. We need to learn (and teach) a new skill: using Internet research. Off hand, I’d say this has several key components:

   Formulating a relevant query
   Asking relevant, complete, and reasonable questions
   Evaluating the relative merit of what you find
   Adapting what you find to suit your exact problem

   Adapting Answers

   No answer is likely to meet your requirements completely. In fact, I often see people badly struggle badly to make something fit when it would have been easier to do new development (or use a different tool). Reuse is often a good thing, but it isn’t always. Ideally, you will fully understand something before you use it so you can fit it to your exact situation.

   Ban the Internet?

   I like to think most of us are smart enough not to cheat ourselves. You know that if you cheat your way through a class, you aren’t really getting benefit out of it, and I would imagine that anyone motivated enough to build projects on their own are going to take time to understand what they reuse, and that’s great. It gets more complicated when you have an external entity (like a boss or a teacher) pressuring you.

   However, I think reusing things from the Internet is part of the new landscape and it won’t go away.

   So when [Christian] talks about the “full Stack Overflow Developer,” I think he’s missing the point. The developer that can effectively mine the Internet for possible solutions, evaluate them, and adapt them is going to win. We just need to get people in that mindset and tp stop blindly reusing things we don’t understand. We should teach handling Internet-based reuse as yet another tool that you need to master.

   Reply
8. March 18, 2016 at 9:49 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Being a Full Stack Developer
   http://www.sitepoint.com/full-stack-developer/

   What does a full-stack developer mean?

   The term full-stack means developers who are comfortable working with both back-end and front-end technologies.

   To be more specific, it means that the developer can work with databases, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and everything in between, also, venturing as far as converting Photoshop designs to front-end code.

   A full-stack developer doesn’t need to master all of the areas and technologies he needs to work it, because that just makes it nearly impossible, he just needs to be comfortable working with those technologies, and that’s a lot too.

   Reply
9. March 19, 2016 at 8:10 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Full-Stack Web Developer
   https://www.carlosja.com/full-stack-web-developer/

   What is a Full-Stack Developer?

   The term full-stack means developers who are comfortable working with both front-end and back-end technologies, and to be a bit more specific; it means a developer has a full understanding all aspects of creating a web site or web application such as databases, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and some may even get into Graphic Design and Digital Marketing.

   So to go back to the question I’m always asked. What do I like to do best? Everything.

   Full Stack developer have a specialized knowledge in all stages of software development, and design projects.

   Reply
10. March 19, 2016 at 8:13 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    3 Web Dev Careers Decoded: Front-End vs Back-End vs Full Stack
    http://blog.udacity.com/2014/12/front-end-vs-back-end-vs-full-stack-web-developers.html

    You open a new browser tab, type in a URL, and press enter. The site loads instantly. It nearly takes your breath away with its ultra-clean layout, well-constructed pages, and impressive visuals.

    The people responsible for every part of that experience? Web developers.

    As of November 2014, the Internet contains more than 680 million pages. And counting. Talk about some serious job security for web developers, the people responsible for coding, building, analyzing, and maintaining all those websites.

    Websites are now a critical component for any business to stay competitive. And as web development trends and best practices change practically with the season, there’s no shortage of work for developers.

    If you’ve dabbled in HTML, JavaScript, or maybe a little Python, but you’re not quite sure which path to venture out on, this handy breakdown is for you.

    Front-End Developer

    The front end of a website is the part that users interact with. Everything that you see when you’re navigating around the Internet, from fonts and colors to dropdown menus and sliders, is a combo of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript being controlled by your computer’s browser.

    front-end devs must be adept at three main languages: HTML, CSS, and Javascript programming.

    Back-End Developer

    So what makes the front end of a website possible? Where is all that data stored? This is where the back end comes in. The back end of a website consists of a server, an application, and a database. A back-end developer builds and maintains the technology that powers those components which, together, enable the user-facing side of the website to even exist in the first place.

    In order to make the server, application, and database communicate with each other, back-end devs use server-side languages like PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, and .Net to build an application, and tools like MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server to find, save, or change data and serve it back to the user in front-end code. Job openings for back-end developers often also call for experience with PHP frameworks like Zend, Symfony, and CakePHP; experience with version control software like SVN, CVS, or Git; and experience with Linux as a development and deployment system.

    Full Stack Developer

    There’s often not a black-and-white distinction between front-end and back-end development. “Front-end developers often need to learn those additional back-end skills, and vice versa, especially in the current economy where marketing is thinly resourced,” said Matranga. “Developers need some of that cross-discipline. Oftentimes, you have to be a generalist.”

    Full stack developers are jacks-of-all-trades.

    Enter: the full stack developer. The role was popularized four years ago by Facebook’s engineering department. The idea is that a full stack developer can work cross-functionally on the full “stack” of technology, i.e. both the front end and back end. Full stack developers offer the full package.

    “Working on both the server side and client side professionally opens more opportunities,”

    Full stack developers work, like back-end devs, on the server side of web programming, but they can also fluently speak the front-end languages that control how content looks on a site’s user-facing side. They’re jacks-of-all-trades.

    Regardless of the specific tools, dependent on the project or client at hand, full stack developers should be knowledgeable in every level of how the web works: setting up and configuring Linux servers, writing server-side APIs, diving into the client-side JavaScript powering an application, and turning a “design eye” to the CSS.

    Using these tools, full stack developers need to be able to immediately identify the client- and server-side responsibilities of a solution and articulate the pros and cons of various solutions.

    Reply
11. March 19, 2016 at 8:15 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Reimagining the Full-Stack Developer
    http://www.skilledup.com/articles/reimagining-the-full-stack-developer

    Demand for the almighty full-stack developer is diminishing within the web development market, but that might not be a bad thing. As technologies become more complex, it is becoming increasingly beneficial for companies to take on someone who specializes in one area.

    The full-stack web developer is a jack-of-all-trades, experienced in handling all steps of web development from the back-end or server side to the front-end or design side.

    Yet only 3% of the web development job market is looking for a full-stack developer, while front-end developers, who handle the user’s interface of a site, are the most desirable at 20%, according to data SkilledUp collected from a dataset of more than 28 million online job postings from May 2013 to September 2014.

    Breaking Down the Stack

    It was once fairly easy to be a full-stack developer in the market, but stacks are a lot bigger and harder to keep up with than they used to be. Rather than being well-versed in everything, full-stack developers risk being spread too thin.

    “From a hiring perspective, it’s much easier to target a single technology — Ruby on Rails or AngularJS — than trying to find the complete package of a full-stack developer who meets all requirements,” said Cooper McGoodwin, project manager at Dolphin Micro, a web development company.

    Change is Constant

    Device manufacturers are moving at a rapid pace to outmaneuver each other, making it unbelievable to be a full-stack developer, said Sean Allen, director of product strategy at OutSystems, an enterprise Rapid Application Delivery platform provider.

    “[Full-stack developers] perpetuate a myth that the unicorn not only exists, but that they can keep up … with the churn of technology,” he said.

    “Having a greater understanding of the entire codebase really helps you understand how your project fits in, even if it’s limited. That is very helpful, so you can understand how the changes you are making affects the rest of the app,” Galant said.“We may need any one of our engineers to tackle any kind of project, from front end to back end to DevOps, etc.”

    Reply
12. October 9, 2019 at 3:56 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Full Stack: “the thing the hiring manager says so we don’t have to list all the requirements so we don’t have to pay a shitload”

    It means I can fit everything in the fucking fridge on a sandwich and cook it on top of an old Cisco router switch.

    Basically your are in something like devops where you do everything.

    Reply
13. October 9, 2019 at 3:58 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    There is full stack developer and full stack engineer

    In small startups where it pretty much means the small engineering team is expected to run the whole show – front to back.

    Reply
14. February 5, 2020 at 8:30 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/tall-and-thin-or-short-and-fat-are-engineers-ready-industry-40/129963103562261?ADTRK=InformaMarkets&elq_mid=12142&elq_cid=876648

    Reply
15. March 20, 2020 at 6:04 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mini Full Stack!
    https://kodarit.fi/kurssiuutuutemme-mini-full-stack/

    mitä Full Stack -koodari sitten tekee?

    Ohjelmoi ruudulla näkyvää Front End eli selaimen koodia (HTML, CSS, JavaScript + jQuery, React, Angular tai Vue)
    Ohjelmoi Back End eli palvelimen/serverin koodia (esim Node.js + Express tai Python + Flask)
    Ohjelmoi tietokantoja/database-koodia (SQL, MongoDB)
    Ohjelmoi näiden kaikkien rajapintoja.

    Reply
16. March 25, 2020 at 1:17 pm

    Roksana Krysht says:

    Hi. Nice article!
    We have so many code sphere. Now I’m thinking about Product Engineer vs. Full-Stack Engineer.

    Reply
17. December 30, 2020 at 7:16 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Do you know anyone who qualifies for ‘Senior Master Developer of Everything There Is?
    We wish everybody a better upcoming year 2021!

    Senior Master Developer of Everything There Is
    https://get.pockethunt.com/helloworldify/?fbclid=IwAR3ZwtraNANxgGIO1LRP_9qAD_1N9G0c0hEnyhNFV5P0YlnCEt38lNijnrA

    Reply
18. January 2, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Senior Master Developer of Everything There Is
    https://get.pockethunt.com/helloworldify/?fbclid=IwAR3ZwtraNANxgGIO1LRP_9qAD_1N9G0c0hEnyhNFV5P0YlnCEt38lNijnrA

    As we’re growing tremendously fast, we are now looking for a new Senior Master Developer of Everything There Is. The successful applicant must be operating on a level completely beyond the full stack – we need a candidate capable of swallowing the entire pile. We like to put things simply and concisely, so we call the role SMDOETI.

    Reply
19. July 26, 2022 at 4:03 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
    Resting on its laurels is costing the industry its hardies
    https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/18/electrical_engineers_extinction/

    OPINION Intel has produced some unbelievable graphs in its time: projected Itanium market share, next node power consumption, multicore performance boosts.

    The graph the company showed at the latest VLSI Symposium, however, was a real shocker.

    While computer science course take-up had gone up by over 90 percent in the past 50 years, electrical engineering (EE) had declined by the same amount. The electronics graduate has become rarer than an Intel-based smartphone.

    That part of the technology industry which makes actual things has always been divided between hardies and softies, soldering iron versus compiler, oscilloscope versus debugger. But the balance is lost. Something is very wrong at the heart of our technology creation supply chain. Where have all the hardies gone?

    Engineering degree courses are a lot of work across a lot of disciplines, with electronic engineering being particularly diverse. The theoretical side covers signal, information, semiconductor devices, optical and electromagnetic theory, so your math better be good. There’s any amount of building-block knowledge needed, analogue and digital, across the spectrum from millimetric RF to high-energy power engineering. And then you have to know how to apply it all to real-world problems.

    This isn’t the sort of course you opt to do because you can’t think of anything better. You have to want to do it, you have to think you can do it, and do it well enough to make it your career. For that, you need prior exposure.

    Reply
20. June 5, 2023 at 7:58 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Dear recruiters,

    if you are looking for:
    - Java, Python, PHP
    - React, Angular
    - PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB
    - AWS, S3, EC2, ECS, EKS
    - Linux system administration
    - Git and CI with TDD
    - Docker, Kubernetes

    That’s not a Full Stack Developer. That’s an entire IT department.

    Your truly

    Reply