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Journal Editorial + CVu Journal Vol 29, #6 - January 2018
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Title: Editorial: Know It All

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 07 January 2018 17:37:04 +00:00 or Sun, 07 January 2018 17:37:04 +00:00

Summary: 

Body: 

There’s a perception of the computer programmer as a kind of hermit wizard: alone with a keyboard, late at night, face lit by the light from an array of monitors, working magic spells with dread incantations. Notwithstanding the reinforcement of gender stereotypes going on here, it’s probably not a completely unjustified image, but today’s programmer is much more likely to work in a team, and the spell books are widely available in mainstream bookstores. The bad-tempered bedroom hacker image persists, mostly in terms of cyber-criminality, but by and large, what programmers do is no longer shrouded in mystique.

It’s probably true that programmers are more comfortable in the company of other programmers, overall, because it’s still easier to converse with someone who understands your (spoken) language. Nevertheless, the idea of ‘hacker culture’ that was so prized during the last century has become diluted to some extent. The sheer number of different programming languages and practices makes it impossible to know everything, and so as we specialise, new sub-sub-cultures arise. We mix and match the various sub-genres, of course, along various axes of programming language, platform, DB, favourite editor, etc.

I once had a kind of parody Tarot card, called ‘The Developer’. I’d now need a whole deck: The Functional, The Embedded, The High-Performance, The Security, The Service, The Scientific, The UX...

Which brings me neatly to the term ‘Full Stack Developer’. It began, fairly simply, as meaning a developer who could put together a full application with one of the popular technology ‘stacks’: LAMP, MEAN, LEAP, WINS. It now seems that ‘Full Stack’ cannot be expressed as a pronounceable word, never mind one with a single syllable. ANTJPMCDKMRK would be needed for one job I saw advertised – and that was just some of the technologies being used. Any takers on what that might stand for?

Notes: 

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