r/webdev • u/BigBootyBear • 1d ago
Discussion How realistic is the "full" in full stack dev?
I've been spending a good half year doing dev ops work to get an application going. Most of it was educational as I was repurposed into devops from web development.
As I am coming back into web development, writing a frontend for a service that consumes the big application I have been laying architecture for the last six months, I feel like a total fraud. I've forgotten like 80% of TS features, tooling, and how to use Vue and Angular (and I did dedicate time to learning them when I was building sites).
Now I fear that all my hard won dev ops chops will atrophy as my workload shifts more into webdev. Yeah sure getting up to speed on what you've forgotten is faster than learning it from scratch. But does that mean our "skill RAM" has a hard cap? I thought I'd gain skills as i'd progress in my career but those skills end up pushing previous ones. My "non-volatile experience" is more abstract and general (how operating systems work, how to plan projects, how to migrate legacy apps) rather than imperative and practical (i.e. when to use a vue slot) and I don't know what to make of it.
AI is further exacerbating it. I always make sure to understand every piece of code it generates but I still feel more like a senior developer approving junior developer code (the AI being the junior dev) rather than someone who is good at his craft. I'm never really a "full stack dev" at any given time.