Difference between Full stack developers Vs Specialized Developers

Bar of skills and standards in the information technology sector is rising high due to the rapid changes and advancements in the IT sphere. The competition is soaring and you need to be either a jack of all trades or master in one at least to survive and excel. Today, full stack web development services are high in demand and countless organizations are rapidly hiring full-stack developers for a wide range of development needs. Wondering whether you should hire dedicated developers who specialize in one programming language or development skill or you should go for a full stack developer who can take up all the development jobs? Well, if you ask me, I would suggest you should run a quick comparison between the two options and check what fits well for your business goals, budget, and purpose? In this post, I’ll try to answer this question. Let’s begin with understanding the what a specialist developer and a full-stack developer is!

A full stack developer

A full-stack developer has the ability and skills to work with frontend as well as backend of an application or website. In other words, full stack developers can work on projects involving user interface development of a website, database, application, and they can also assist the clients during their project’s planning phase. Full stack development experts(working at a reputed full stack development agency) are experienced and well-versed in several key areas including: 1. Frontend development–Angular, React, Node.js, Vue.js, etc.rn2. Backend development – PHP, .NET, Java, etc.rn3. UI/UX design – Complete user interface and user experience designrn4. Markup languages such as CSS and HTMLrn5. Databases – MongoDB, Firebase, MySQL, and PosterSQLrn6. Software testing –Katalon studio, Selenium, Postman, etc. rn7. A full-stack developer can be relied upon for theproject’s architecture, scalability, and roadmap. Quite unlike many people believe, a full-stack developer doesn’t necessarily need to write the website’s code himself. Most of the time the developer will be working on the frontend or backend code of the website. Moreover, coding is just a small part of the full-stack developer’s job. It is mainly because today there are countless customizable tools, libraries, and frameworks that a software/website/app developer can use instead of spending hours on coding alone. For this reason, full-stack developerswho are skilled and competent in backend and frontend tools & frameworks are a popular choice among most businesses looking to hire a full stack development companyor developer today.

A specialized developer

Now, having understood the skills and role of a full stack developer, we should have a quick discussion about a specialized developer as well. Needless to say, a specialized developer is a person who has mastered in one single discipline or development platform and, therefore, works only in that particular area of expertise. This, however, doesn’t mean that a specialized developer is not capable of building & delivering a website/app as a full stack developer can. Instead, it just means that a specialized developer is the person in the office you need to contact for a particular project/subject – design, domain modelling, entity framework, and database design.

Quick comparison between full stack developers and specialized developer

Pros:

1. This is the biggest advantage of hiring a specialized IT development company or specialized developers. You get outstanding quality of work because the developers possess exceptionally great skills and extensive experience in a specialized field/domain. 2. As the specialized developers possess expertise in one domain, it is obvious that they are updated and informed about what’s going on and what in and out in that specific web development area? 3. Assigning tasks becomes efficient and convenient for team members and projects. Why? It’s because you can divide the task in smaller units and assign each unit/module to a different specialized developer in the team working at a website or web development company that you hire for your project.

Cons:

1. Hiring two developers for backend and frontend each may cost you higher than what you pay for hiring a full-stack developer for the same work. 2. Specialized developers are no doubt highly skilled and they are the masters at their job. But, the dependency on other team members tends to be very high when you hire specialized developers because each developer is working on a different module/unit (as discussed above in the pros).

Pros & cons of hiring a full stack developer

Pros:

1. As we already discussed above, a full stack developer knows it all – a jack of all trades. As they say, “a jack of all trades and master of none is sometimes much better than master in just one,” you may get a complete package for all your backend, frontend, testing, QA, code architecture, and other project development needs. 2. A full stack developer is a versatile one who can be relied upon for quickly identifying, escalating, and resolving multiple, multi-purpose issues in situations/projects where many developers work on different project/product parts. Furthermore, if you don’t have a full stack developer, your specialized developers will have to spend hours in discussions to find out the issues and that makes the entire process quite time consuming. 3. When it comes to the cost comparison between a full stack developer and two or more specialized developers, you can save many bucks by hiring a full stack developer for multiple tasks. 4. Since full stack developers are highly flexible and versatile in their abilities/capabilities and skills, you can expect them to switch between multiple tasks.

Cons:

1. When there is high workload and a cluster of problematic tasks that need a resolution, the full stack developer may find it difficult to handle all alone at once. Even if he does that, you cannot expect the same person to start working on another fresh project, which leads to poor time management. Discuss your options with your mobile app development company. 2. Due to working on multiple projects at the same time, full stack developers find it really difficult to learn about the latest tools, technologies, and trends in their expertise area. Other than these, full stack developers don’t divide their work into different tasks rather they work on cohesive parts of one (or more) project(s). As a result, team members aren’t able to regulate, define, and check project completeness at any point-of-instant.

When should you hire a specialized or full stack developer?

Weigh your options by considering the pros and cons of both. Now consider whether you need specialized or full stack development services to decide who to hire for your project based on the: 1. Size of the projectrn2. Project complexityrn3. Project flexibilityrn4. Budgetrn5. Quality of project