A Beginner’s guide to becoming a Full Stack developer: 2023
Well, let’s first understand who exactly is a Full Stack developer. So, a Full-stack developer is supposed to be well-versed in all the layers of the application stack, which includes the client-side (front-end) and server-side (back-end) technologies.
Let’s first discuss the client side, i.e. the front-end aspect of Full Stack development.
Front-end Development
This part of full-stack development involves creating the user interface that users interact with directly. Front-end developers use technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to design and develop responsive, visually appealing, and user-friendly interfaces.
Hence, a Front-end Developer is expected to be proficient in technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which also acts as a mandatory requirement for moving on to the next stage of Front-end development, learning a UI Framework.
A Front-end developer must also work with libraries and frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js to streamline development.
After gaining sound knowledge of React JS, interested learners can also check out Next JS, which is an improved framework based on React JS and provides tremendous new capabilities to a traditional React app by adding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and lots of other functionalities including Server Side Rendering (SSR) and stuff.
Well, this is where it gets confusing as people start getting confused regarding the selection of a JavaScript framework.
To make it simpler, since the industry is now leaning towards React JS it’s a preferred choice to go with it and learn Next JS after that.
Now, after one has attained enough knowledge on the front end, the next target should be to grasp the back end.
Back-end development
The back end is the server side of the application, responsible for handling data processing, business logic, and database management. Full-stack developers proficient in back-end development work with server-side technologies such as Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Python (Django), PHP (Laravel), or Java (Spring) to build robust and scalable application back-ends.
There are multiple pathways that you can choose from depending on the background of programming languages that you are familiar with.
For instance, if you learnt Python, then you can either learn Flask ( micro web framework ) or you can proceed with Django, which makes a production-ready backend.
If you possess sound knowledge of JavaScript, you can very well proceed with Express JS and Node JS, and for Go lang users, Gin framework and FastHTTP get the job done.
The next step involves learning Database Management.
Database Management
Full-stack developers also work with databases to store and retrieve data efficiently. They might use SQL databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases like MongoDB or Firebase, or even a combination of both depending on the project’s requirements.
A knowledge of ORM (Object Relational Mapper) and ODM (Object-oriented Data Model) is always a plus point.
The current industry standards include sequelize-cli with Express & Node & a cloud-hosted database servers, like Mongo DB hence don’t forget to go through it.
Cloud Computing & Dev Ops.
An optional step, but is becoming significant day by day, is to learn the fundamentals of Cloud Computing and Dev Ops.
When it comes to Cloud Computing, the learning approaches are going to be vendor-specific, popular vendors include, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Coming to Dev-Ops, it is a huge topic and getting a grasp of everything is going to take forever, For Full Stack Engineers, the most recommended topic involves learning containerization.
Technologies like Docker and Kubernetes would prove to be an immense help.
Here is a link to a complete roadmap for Dev Ops:https://roadmap.sh/devops
