The rapid changes in the IT world are raising the bar on today's professionals. Today, a developer needs to be much more than just a specialist in a particular field. In addition to basic technical skills, they must be able to work with people, monitor trends in various fields, and constantly learn and improve.
Both specialized developers and full-stack developers have their own pros and cons. While choosing between them, you must carefully understand your own project and then make a decision. Different types of businesses need to understand tasks, determine the budget and complexity, and then hire either specialist or full-stack developers.
Let’s start with what specialist and full-stack developers are so you can make your team even stronger.
Specialist Developers
A specialized developer is an expert in a single discipline whose work revolves around that particular discipline. Specialized developers are subject matter experts of particular technologies. In comparison with full-stack developers, they have a better understanding of their respective technologies. This means the quality of their output is better.
For example, a front-end developer creates user interface dynamics and translates PSD templates into HTML code.
A back-end developer creates the “core” of a site or web application: server-executable code and database architecture
An Android apps developer creates Android OS applications and an iOS apps developer creates iOS applications.
One of the biggest advantages of hiring a specialized developer is that you will always get high-quality work for all the parts of your project.
This specialist is dependent on other members of the team. In some cases, where others have not executed part of their job, a developer cannot accomplish his task.
When it comes down to hiring, specialized developers are much easier to hire in comparison to full-stack developers.
Hiring two developers both for frontend and backend costs more than hiring a single full-stack developer who can do the same work.
Specialized developers should be hired if you have a large budget and you want to make the highest quality product.
Full Stack Developers
Full-stack developers are well-versed in all the various stages of software development, namely frontend, backend, QA testing, the architecture of code, and many more. They can easily cut down different time-consuming activities and easily find problems quickly. These developers create sites and web applications and perform front-end and back-end development work simultaneously.
Full-stack developers are much more independent in comparison to specialized developers. Hence, the overall development time gets greatly reduced.
Hiring one full stack developer can easily replace two or more specialized developers.
A full-stack developer can easily be a jack of all trades while being the master of none. Full-stack developers work in a huge number of fields and many times it becomes difficult for them to keep up with the latest trends, tools, and technologies of all areas of expertise. Also, a lack of in-depth knowledge can easily cause some hindrance, which leads to below-average service.
Most often they work in startups and small web design studios. Sometimes full-stacks work in large companies as part of a team along with front-end and back-end developers to control and coordinate their work.
Conclusion
We have considered the pros and cons of both full-stack and specialized developers. When it comes down to choosing between full-stack developers and specialized developers, it becomes more pertinent for businesses to select what suits their requirements best.
Different projects need in-depth knowledge as well as expertise. You can hire full-stack developers to support the project in the future. But your company needs a team of specialized developers, especially at the start, if you are searching for higher quality output. In this case, the project can easily be divided into smaller tasks and be completed in an organized manner.