In information technology, terminology has always been a bit slippery, especially when describing human roles.

Speaking of software development, it has been customary to classify developers as many varieties like web developer, backend developer, database developer and so on. If you take a person who does all these things, you get a full stack developer. A person who claims to be a full stack developer wants to tell you that they know how to develop both user interfaces, server end points and are also confident with database queries.

Beyond the full stack

Although the “full stack” might sound like a lot, there has been still some important components missing from the definition of that stack. In particular, think about the process of shaping up IT infrastructures.

To many “home-grown” developers who started out with self-made apps and hobby projects and then integrated into startups and then corporations, the idea of defining big IT infrastructures having multiple server machines talking to each other over different protocols and balancing huge amounts of data traffic by splitting responsibility over multiple machines and environments
may have seemed a bit like black magic, some secret art that only few knew to unfold.

However, the boundaries may be shifting again.

Bring in the AWS Cloud Development Kit

The AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit) is one of the most amazing tools that I’ve come across in a long time. In the old days, setting up an IT infrastrucure was a big deal, requiring lots of cables, different machines and configuration scripts in multiple formats and languages. But today, the AWS CDK changes all that because with this toolkit, you can actually define all that complex infrastructure using very simple code, one deployment pipeline and just one programming language… (By the way, I recommend TypeScript!)

Where to start?

In my previous blog posts, I have sometimes written some real code examples to highlight my ideas. I won’t let you down this time either - but since being a bit lazy today, I point you, dear inspired reader, to some good tutorials written by others, starting from here.

Cheers!