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Is there such a thing as natural talent for specific categories of developers?

I've seen this occur a few times. I have more affinity for front-end development or separately, for UX, so I naturally see wireframes, I naturally know what looks good or not to a user, and I can relate to a user.

I've seen multiple backend devs who share the same complaint that they don't have a knack for front-end and that they hate front-end. They can create beautiful architectures and solve complex problems, but they tell me: "Don't ask me to tell you what looks like a good layout or not because I have no idea".

The same thing happens to me when it comes to back-end (even though I'm a Fullstack developer): Don't try to give me extremely complex problems because I will likely get very stuck, but ask me if a design would look good, ask me to design a website UX wise and I will do well without a great deal of effort.

I wonder why I have a hard time with back-end and others vice versa. Maybe we're trained more in certain areas or our brains function differently.

And so.. I wonder if more people see this happen in their workplace and if this observation holds true.

Comments
  • 1
    Yes I believe they are different aptitudes.

    Aesthetics, vs interaction intuition, vs logic. These are just different things.

    Most people don't have a whole bunch of different talents. They usually have on area they're best at.

    Every now and then you'll find someone who is really good at everything.
  • 2
    I only do backend / tooling. Never made smth pretty in my entire life in exception of amazing cli progress bars.

    I can spend ages on gui/design but it won't change a thing. Prolly steal layout from existing app if I have to.

    Someone few days ago complained here about u of dR while I think it's perfect. Is it me?
  • 0
    Absolutely yes
  • 0
    it happens in everything else so it will happen here also

    tip for making good teams, regardless of the label you can generally tell when someone has a knack for something others don't. so ask them if they like doing that activity and if yes make them the responsible party for that activity. suddenly you got yourself x10 teams and y'all can sit back as management thinks everything needs to take x30 the time and it doesn't
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