Question
I know that term is thrown loosely around, but I want to know how I can become a full stack ruby on rails developer, with additional knowledge on using frameworks such as ember/angular. I also know a bit of photoshop/illustrator and would like to add UI/UX to that. Or am I just kidding my self here?
This is what I have figured out from a bit of digging around
1. Learn front end development: HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Angular, etc.
2. Learn RoR
3. Continue to dig deeper into JS frameworks.
3. Pick up UX & UI principles along with tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, UXpin and Sketchup.
Or should I just replace 1, 2 and 3 with the MEEN stack?
(MongoDB, Ember, Express, Node)
Answer
"Full-stack" web developer does get thrown around. However I believe that is still has a pretty static definition.
My understanding is it is a "jack of all trades" scenario. Except by "jack" I mean ver knowledgable just not a master, and by "all trades" I mean the layers of of a full stack developer mentioned here:
http://www.laurencegellert.com/2012/08/what-is-a-full-stack-developer/
I would like to think that I am on my path to becoming a full stack developer. I believe this takes a long time. So I started by taking freelance work that enabled me to get my hands dirty. The more client need I answer the more I become familiar with all of these layers.
The only path I know to becoming a full stack developer is just start building things.
Want a starting point? Build an SPA that communicates with Wordpress for managing the state over the new WP JSON REST API, using Backbone.,js.