But open source changed all that. Most server side problems are already solved by off the shelf code, and server engineers became more integrators and architects than actual programmers: It's pretty easy to connect everything, build a logic layer (That might be complicated - But mostly due to large amount of product requirements and not complexity), an API layer, a database et voila!
As server code becomes simpler (And client code becomes more complex and rich), the main challenge for backend and application engineers became the DevOps side.
Building, the application, integrations, dependencies and frameworks, automating processes and tests, securing, backing up and scaling the system have become the skills to learn.
And while those skills used to be owned by selected devops engineers, more documentation and better tools allow every server side engineer with network and os knowledge the ability to do all of the above.
All of this, of course, helps you focus on what's really important as a developer: Delivering.
Microservices ecosystem (Credit: Sequoia) |