There's an interesting article from Christian M. Mackeprang that tries to provide some definition to the term "full stack programmer" and what it really means to the job market.

Back around 2013, the term Full Stack developer started to come up in job descriptions and blog posts. Companies were realizing that hiring developers with expertise in only one language just wasn’t enough anymore. A web developer that can handle a variety of tasks and environments is considerably more useful, and was starting to become the norm.

[...] What is a full stack developer supposed to know, anyway? Job descriptions frequently mention combinations of frontend and backend technologies such as JavaScript and Node, PHP and jQuery, Angular and Spring, and many others. In reality there is a significant amount of information outside those realms that would improve someone’s ability to build a website, and gone are the days when you could stick with what you know and make a career out of a single technology.

He talks about the combinatorial explosion the number of possible technology combinations can cause and how the usefulness of specific posts/resources is dwindling because of it. He then talks about "hackers" as "antifragile programmers" being the ones that enjoy the exploration of the tools and systems and are not bothered by change. He also suggests that developers need good skills in time management and setting expectations to prevent too much "exploration time".

He finishes out the post sharing thoughts about redefining the roles we're actually looking for an the individuals we want to fill them. He offers pointers about gaining context around issues, understand tradeoffs and doing what other people don't like doing to make your way ahead.

According to this new post on DevShed, there have been several targeted attacks against U.S. bank websites (DDoS), some of which involved the compromise of PHP-based applications.

Once the hackers got into the PHP-based websites, they inserted toolkits to turn them into launch pads for their distributed denial-of-service attacks. Hackers then launched the attacks on banks by connecting directly to the compromised PHP-based websites and sending them commands, or took advantage of intermediate servers, proxies or scripts to make the websites do their bidding. InformationWeek lists three attack tools used by the hackers: KamiKaze, AMOS, and the “itsokaynoproblembro” toolkit, also known as Brobot.

Several major banks have been targeted including Bank of America, JP Morgan/Chase, HSBC and Well Fargo. The main problem was out-of-date software running on the site containing known security issues the attackers could exploit to install their own software.

If a hacker can break into a PHP-based website to use it as a staging area for an attack on a different website, they can also use that website to store stolen information. InformationWeek cited the example of the Eurograbber attack campaign, revealed earlier this month. The gang involved in that campaign stole $47 million from more than 30,000 corporate and private banking customers – and used PHP-based websites into which they hacked to store stolen information.

On the Developer Tutorials Blog today, there's a new post aimed at WordPress users to help them on the path to becoming "power users" with five tips.

If you're a wordpress power user, you'll inevitably have some questions about how you can improve your blog or add new features. Here are five tips that will make life easier for people wanting to maximize their use of Wordpress.

The list is:

• Quickly Find Page/Post ID
• Custom Front Page
• Password Protect Wordpress
• Protect from the 'Digg Efect' with HTML
• Stop Hackers

Each of them with their own explanations (and links to other resources detailing how they're done).

Everyone in the PHP community (as is probably true all around the web) is buzzing about the new offering from Google - the Google Code Search. In the PHP community, the ones talking about it so far include:

• Chris Shiflett's look at the security aspect of the search
• Ilia Alshanetsky's take on the search as it possibly being a hacker's good friend
• Pierre-Alain Joye's searches for macros and the term "virtual_file_ex"
• Harry Fuecks' own search for superglobal-related issues
• Ivo Jansch's happy look into frustrations other developers have had (ex. this search)
• Martin Brotzeller's comments on the new tool

Check out this handy tool and see what you think. Does it provide too much access to code that needs to stay out of hacker's hands? Or does it promote the "open" in open source better than most of the tools out there?

Everyone in the PHP community (as is probably true all around the web) is buzzing about the new offering from Google - the Google Code Search. In the PHP community, the ones talking about it so far include:

• Chris Shiflett's look at the security aspect of the search
• Ilia Alshanetsky's take on the search as it possibly being a hacker's good friend
• Pierre-Alain Joye's searches for macros and the term "virtual_file_ex"
• Harry Fuecks' own search for superglobal-related issues
• Ivo Jansch's happy look into frustrations other developers have had (ex. this search)
• Martin Brotzeller's comments on the new tool

Check out this handy tool and see what you think. Does it provide too much access to code that needs to stay out of hacker's hands? Or does it promote the "open" in open source better than most of the tools out there?