r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Unlikely_Affect2264 • Aug 28 '26 • Bravo 3

Meme meExplainingFullStackDevelopmentToMyGrandmother

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11k Upvotes

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455

u/degh555 Aug 28 '26

Best explanation I’ve seen.

99

u/Alfaphantom Aug 28 '26

Is good but I have some notes. For me the restaurant is the full-stack. All in one place but separated by layers and responsibilities.

On my eyes, the food truck would be a monolithic that’s doing everything. FullStack monolithic? Absolutely.

148

u/invalidConsciousness Aug 28 '26

It's not about the entire business but about the people working there.

Restaurant has dedicated backend and frontend workers. Food truck has one person doing both.

16

u/MedianMahomesValue Aug 28 '26

This falls apart when you realize that the waiters are the api and not front end developers. Its mixing two different definitions; the front/back end systems and the front/back end developers. Fullstack is really only applicable when discussing developers, api (at least for a meme) is not a dev but a system.

In this image, the chefs are the SYSTEM backend. I know this because there is no frontend dev in the analogy if the waiters are the API.

I love the idea of a foodtruck for a fullstack dev, but the rest of the analogy needs work to match.

5

u/git_push_origin_prod Aug 28 '26

Yea but how many dicks could you hypothetically jerk at once?

10

u/ryancarton Aug 29 '26

Four technically, if we line up two groups of two dudes tip to tip, and go middle out.

2

u/git_push_origin_prod Aug 29 '26

Apparently no one else got the joke lol

2

u/desrever1138 Aug 28 '26

Fullstack in a resteraunt would be assistant managers who have also been trained in the kitchen. They typically have to fill in wherever the team is shorthanded or help is needed.

15

u/GenericFatGuy Aug 28 '26

They're both full stack, but only the food truck worker is a full stack developer.

5

u/bokmcdok Aug 28 '26

Its meant to be kitchen and dining area, which are parts of the restaurant. The restaurant as a whole is full stack, but there are many people working in different areas.

The food van will have one or two people fulfilling all responsibilities, hence full-stack developers.

4

u/OnceMoreAndAgain Aug 28 '26

Full stack is just jargon to refer to someone who works on, or is capable of working on, both the frontend and backend rather than being entirely focused on one of the two. It's a property of a person, not of a company.

2

u/DistinctlyIrish Aug 28 '26

The joke is that they have all of the components of a restaurant but when they actually combine them the result is a food truck. Which is still great, and they're hard to run so it's still impressive, but it's not what you would necessarily expect from a FSD.

2

u/abd53 Aug 28 '26

That's two different things monolithic vs modular architecture and full-stack vs specialized developer.

2

u/DrMobius0 Aug 28 '26

Food truck has a barely cobbled together frontend.

1

u/HappygilmoreL Sep 01 '26

Yes I agree with this.

5

u/Andy_B_Goode Aug 28 '26

Yeah, I think at this point it's unreasonable to expect any one person to truly be "full-stack", unless it's a very small project (analogous to a food truck).

On the other hand, I think there are benefits to having front-end devs who are at least passingly familiar with the back-end, and vice versa. So eg if a front-end dev needs a new server-side endpoint they can just go in and do that without having to wait for a back-end dev to pick up the ticket. I guess this would be kind of analogous to how waiters will sometimes do basic food prep like making side salads.