The Guide to becoming a full stack developer in 2018
1 like75 views
This document provides a guide for becoming a full-stack developer in 2018. It outlines 8 key skills needed: 1) HTML/CSS, 2) JavaScript, 3) a back-end language like Node.js, Ruby, Python, or PHP, 4) databases and web storage, 5) HTTP and REST, 6) web application architecture, 7) Git, and 8) basic algorithms and data structures. For each skill, it provides details on important concepts and tools to learn. The goal is to learn both front-end skills like HTML/CSS and back-end skills like databases, APIs, and server-side programming in order to build complete web applications.
The Guide to becoming a full stack developer in 2018
- 1. A Guide to Becoming a Full-Stack Developer in 2018 1
- 2. Full Full-Stack Web Development, according to the Stack Overflow 2016 Developer Survey, is the most popular developer occupation today. It’s no wonder then that there are dozens of online and in-person programs that will help peovple become Full-Stack Developers and then even assist these new developers land high-paying program- ming jobs. Some popular online programs can be found on Lynda, Udacity, Cour- sera, Thinkful, General ozAssembly, and so much more. Aside from these online programs, there are also in-person coding bootcamps that are teaching people the skills required to become web develop- ers. 2 Stack Developer
- 3. In this article I won’t be discussing which websites or coding bootcamps have the best web development programs, instead I will be providing a definitive guide to what I believe are the most important skills required to become a Full-Stack Web Developer today and land a job if you’ve never coded before. I will be basing the list off of three things 01 02 03 A combination of what most programs in 2017 are teaching students. My own personal experi- ences from interviewing at companies for developer po- sitions in the past and also interviewing potential candi- dates for current Full-Stack Developer positions at my current company. Stories and feedback from people on Coderbyte who have been accepted to coding bootcamps and then proceed- ed to get programming jobs 3
- 4. If you want to become a Full-Stack Web Developer in 2018 and land your first job, below is a reference guide with a list of things you should learn. The Definitive Guide A Full-Stack Web Developer is someone who is able to work on both the front-end and back-end portions of an application. Front- end generally refers to the portion of an application the user will see or interact with, and the back-end is the part of the application that handles the logic, database interactions, user authentication, server configuration, etc. 4
- 5. 1. HTML/CSS The following topics related to HTML/CSS come up often in interviews and on the actual job when you are working. HTML allows you to add content to a website and CSS is what allows you to style your content. Semantic HTML Be able to explain the CSS Box Model Benefits of CSS preprocessors CSS Media Queries to target different devices and write responsive CSS Bootstrap 5
- 6. Below are some topics you need to understand as a Full-Stack Developer 2.JAVASCRIPT Understand how to work with the DOM. Also know what JSON is and how to manipulate it. JavaScript is the most popular language in both Full-Stack, Front-end, and Back-end Development. It’s the only language that runs natively in the browser, and can double up as a server-side language as well Important language features such as functional composition, prototypal inheritance, closures, event delegation, scope, higher-order functions. Asynchronous control flow, promises, and call- backs. Learn how to properly structure your code and modularize parts of it, things like webpack, browserify, or build tools like gulp will definitely be helpful to know. Although some may argue that you should be using this less or that it’s slowly dying, jQuery code still exists in most applications and a solid understanding of it will be helpful. Some knowledge on testing frameworks and why they’re important (some may even claim that this topic should be optional). 6
- 7. Once you feel you’ve gotten a good grasp on HTML/CSS and JavaScript, you’ll want to move on to a back-end language that will handle things like database operations, user authentica- tion, and application logic Here are jobs out there for all the languages listed . 7 3. Back-End Language
- 8. LANGUAGES Node.js This is a great option because Node.js is itself just a JavaS- cript environment which means you don’t need to learn a new language. Ruby Some popular frameworks for developing in Ruby are Rails and Sinatra. Plenty of programs teach Ruby as a first back-end language. Python Some popular frameworks for de- veloping in Python are Django and Flask. Java The Java language isn’t taught so much these days when it comes to Full-Stack Web De- velopment, but some companies do use Java as their back-end and it is still a very in-demand language PHP PHP is rarely taught in pro- grams these days, but just like with Java, it is still very in-demand and it is a cor- nerstone of the web today. 8
- 9. 4. Databases & Web Storage When learning to build web applications, at some point you’ll probably want to store data somewhere and then access it later. You should have a good grasp on the following topics related to databases and storage. Understand the benefits of relational data, e.g. SQL. Learn about NoSQL databases, e.g. MongoDB. Understand which would be better in certain situations. Know how to connect a database with your chosen back-end language (e.g. Node.js + MongoDB) Understand the benefits of in-memory data stores like Redis or memcached Web storage to store sessions, cookies, and cached data in the browser. Scaling databases, ACID, and ORM (all optional). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9
- 10. 5. HTTP & REST HTTP is a stateless application protocol on the Internet — It’s what allows clients to communicate with servers 1. What is REST and why is it important in regards to the HTTP protocol and web applications. 2. Best practices for designing a RESTful API. POST/GET requests. 3. Learning how to use Chrome DevTools can be extremely helpful. 4. What are SSL Certificates. 5. HTTP/2 & SPDY (optional) 6. WebSockets, Web Workers, and Service Workers (all optional) H T T P 10
- 11. 11 6. Web Application Architecture Learn about common platforms as a service, e.g. Heroku and AWS. Heroku allows you to easily upload your code and have an application up and running with very little configuration or server maintenance and AWS offers dozens of products and services to help with storage, video processing, load balancing, and much more Performance optimization for applications and modern browsers. Some opinions on what a web application architecture should include. Once you think you have a grasp on HTML/CSS, JavaS- cript, back-end programming, databases, and HTTP/ REST, then comes the tricky part. At this point if you want to create a somewhat complex web application, you’ll need to know how to structure your code, how to sepa- rate your files, where to host your large media files, how to structure the data in your database, where to perform certain computational tasks (client-side vs server-side), and much more. Designing Web Applications by Microsoft. MVC. Most importantly though you should try to work on projects with people, look at codebases of popular projects on GitHub, and learn as much as you can from senior developers.
- 12. 7. GIT Git is a version control system that allows developers working on a team to keep track of all the changes being made to a codebase. It’s important to know a few important things related to Git so that you understand how to properly get the latest code that you’ve missed, update parts of the code, make fixes, and change other people’s code without breaking things. You should definitely learn the concept behind Git and play around with it yourself. 12
- 13. 8. Basic Algorithms & Data Structures This topic is somewhat polarizing in the development world because there are de- velopers who don’t think there should be such a heavy focus on computer science topics like tree traversal, sorting, algorithm analysis, matrix manipulation, etc. While there are companies that practically require applicants to have a computer science degree or equivalent, there are plenty of companies that will hire people without this technical qualification if they can prove that they know how to develop applications and show an understanding of the whole domain. 13
- 14. 14 Improving your Algorithms & Data Structure Skills Article Study hash tables and try to understand them on a deeper level. This data structure underlies objects in JavaScript (dictionaries in Python and hashes in Ruby). Understand how trees and graphs can be beneficial as data structures. Understand the basics of Big-O analysis so you don’t do silly things like create a nested loop 3 levels down if you don’t need to! Know when to use an object vs an array and understand the trade-offs. Learn why caching is so important when working with a large amount of data. Also learn the pros and cons of in-memory vs disk storage. Learn the difference between queues and stacks. It’ll be hard work learning all of this, but it’s rewarding in the end and Full-Stack Development is fun!!! Here are some things you should definitely learn: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.