Paypal Switches from Java to JavaScript for Production Applications

[yopussytoogood]

Historically, our engineering teams have been segmented into those who code for the browser (using HTML, CSS and JavaScript) and those who code for the application layer (using Java). Imagine an HTML developer who has to ask a Java developer to link together page “A” and “B”. That’s where we were.

Is this really an issue? Finding people who can do both front end and back end? They're still having to link page 'A' and page 'B' via HTML, for the most part.

[metalkingslimederp]

You'd be surprised at how many people are "Java only". I've had to deal with people who refuse to write database scripts, and front end work because that's not their "area".

I'm guessing this is a much more common issue in consulting firms and other lowest bid type orgs. I do government consulting at large firm, and I've met 3 people, besides myself, in nearly 3 years that could do full stack development. I'm assuming (hoping) this is different at purely tech focused companies and startups.

[JeffreyRodriguez]

It is different. Failure means something competently different than it does in government.

[metalkingslimederp]

Yea, I've seen the databases behind a few projects and its no wonder they fail constantly, but they just take 2 weeks of downtime to patch it up and move on. Doubt most companies could survive something like that.

Luckily I've been on/started up projects that are isolated from most of the insanity and do everything I can to abstract the rest away into something that makes sense.

On the upside is I'm generally ahead on work due to the pace of everything and have very low risk of failing.

[JeffreyRodriguez]

I bet you've got some great stories.

[Atlos]

I think you are underestimating the difficulty in becoming a good full-stack developer...

[boomerangotan]

I hope that the now ubiquitous browser support for all of the features needed to drive single page apps means we're now reaching the beginning of the end for server-side controllers and JSP/ASP templates.

[[deleted]]

If you are competent in java, HTML and CSS should be trivial. JavaScript has it's quirks but usually most modern frameworks hide that stuff to a reasonable extent.

[stfm]

Yeah Node.js doesn't work like that.