White-Box vs. Black-Box Testing

I have something blasphemous to tell you.

Unit Testing is wrong.

There, I said it.

I know I just insulted most people's sacred cow.

Sorry, not sorry.

I will explain, bear with me.

What is wrong with Full Stack Development

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Table of Contents

• What is full-stack development

• Why is full-stack development necessary today

• What is wrong with full-stack development

• Conclusion

What is full-stack development

The predominant web application development model today requires splitting application logic in two parts:

• The front-end, running on the browser.
• The back-end, running on the server.

The front-end is typically written in JavaScript, while the back-end is typically written in Java, Scala, C#, or some other programming language. The two ends invariably communicate with each other via REST. The choice of JavaScript and REST is not due to any technical merit inherent in these technologies, (there is none,) but purely due to historical accident; see michael.gr - The Wild, Wild Web.

A web application developer can either focus on one part of the stack, or work on both parts. Due to reasons that will be explained further down, more often than not, web developers are asked to work on both parts simultaneously. When this happens, it is known as full-stack development.

For the purposes of this paper, we will call full-stack development not just this mode of work, but also this architectural style as a whole: full-stack development is when application logic must be written both on the server and on the client.

Full-Stack Development is a paradox, since it suggests a way of work which is contrary to what common sense dictates. Common sense calls for specialists each working on their own area of specialization, so one would expect to see different developers focusing on different layers of the stack, and nobody ever attempting something as preposterous as working on all layers simultaneously. However, there is a technological hurdle which renders this necessary today.

Why is full-stack development necessary today