A substantial portion can handle both, but opt out of doing so due to the pay not matching up, instead getting less than those who specialize due to it mostly being a cost-cutting move from the employing company.
People underestimate either side. You can get very very deep in both of them, it's no longer just about putting HTML elements on the page, or sending back a response. They've both become oceans, from exploring 3D content to computing on the edge to an entire orchestration of tools to manage as little downtime as possible.
It is definitely possible, but it takes organizations that allows people to learn and practice both, and a developer culture that allows for developers to be multi-disciplinar.
So far what I've been seeing is whole teams that "don't believe in full-stack developers" so they box and typecast people who try to do both.
You gotta send the right message from the top to change this. I've had some FE developers that picked up BE and are doing great at it.
I guess I would respond to that by saying that both sides have moved. Really what was "back end" 10 or 15 years ago is closer to devops than what most would call backend.
Would you expect these new backend folks to be able to, take, say, a clean linux install and build a relatively full stack on top of that - Apache config, firewall, that sort of thing?
Yeah, that's definitely true. Today I see lots of backend devs who don't even know how to setup deployment in AWS using any of their services, let alone how to deploy to another cloud service or VPS/dedicated server.
I remember this changing around 2015 or so, when I started getting the first batch of devs that only knew how to deploy using the one single way they learned, and never updated that. I specifically remember one dev that was coding for 3, 4 years saying his dream was to make and deploy his own website. He never had a personal project.
Which is perfectly fine, don't get me wrong. The part I'm not a fan of is the culture against people who can do multiple things well. Which, funny enough, I am required to do in my job (I have to do most DevOps, plus mentor frontend and backend devs).
HN is not a good user interface, it definitely shows that it is not being maintained by an expert in front end.
Tables for layout isn’t just an example of a dated web site, it is also an accessibility nightmare which no professional web developer would allow to leave their localhost.
For fully able users with access to a screen and a mouse, perhaps so. However for users navigating with assistive technology things are not so simple. A UI is not only what you can see, it is also how different users on different devices interact with it. A front end developer know that and knows how to make a simple UI accessible to every user.
People underestimate either side. You can get very very deep in both of them, it's no longer just about putting HTML elements on the page, or sending back a response. They've both become oceans, from exploring 3D content to computing on the edge to an entire orchestration of tools to manage as little downtime as possible.