Full-stack web development is one of the most popular technology domains today. A full-stack web developer is considered to be a jack-of-all-trades developer or at least hoping to become one. He has the skills to take a client’s idea from paper to a completely functioning web application or system.
If you are pursuing to become a full-stack web developer, then you have to understand the full life cycle of a web application. You will need to have information about front ends web development, such as the design of the web and HTML structure.
Furthermore, to transfer the data from the front end to the back end of the website, and vice versa.
And finally, for the back-end programming of a web, you need to know how to utilize the data in a programming language and store it in a database.
As we all know not everyone can become a full-stack developer. If you decide to become a full-stack developer, you must realize whether you have all the necessary personal traits to handle the job. These are some basic requirements that you may need:
- Love for knowledge
- Analytical mind
- Patience
- Creative vision
- Discipline
- Global thinking
- Excellent communication skills
- Curiosity
- Time management skills
Check here top full-stack web developer portfolios.
How to Become a Full-Stack Developer?
I know the idea explained above is a bit vague, so let’s get onto the guidelines to what a full-stack web developer is. These guidelines are more precise and technical, which will teach you from scrap how to take a step in this occupation.
1. Front End Development
Full-Stack web developers need to learn front-end web development, which includes everything that a user sees and interacts with on a browser. The necessary foundations of this development are programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is essential for every website you are executing. By using simple markup syntax in HTML, you can define the structural content of a website.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a secure coding language for adding different styles to your websites such as colors, sidelines, fonts and their sizes, and much more.
HTML and CSS are two necessities that every web developer needs to know. Having understood both of them, you can move on to JavaScript and make sure to understand the basics.
Java Script helps add a dynamic feature to any website. The basics of JavaScript are easy to understand, but the underlying ECMAScript specification involves more advanced features.
Additional knowledge of third-party libraries such as jQuery, Angular, and ReactJs, etc. are also beneficial in front-end web development.
2. Back End Development
The front end is everything that the user sees while the back end is the transcendent part that remains unnoticed. In the back end, web development, a web developer handles the database operations, user authentication, and security of the web and application logic.
There are numerous coding that is used in back-end web development like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJs, etc.
The critical consideration here is that you can learn as many following development languages as you want, but you have to choose at least one language and focus on it until you are an expert.
3. Databases and Storage
While becoming a full-stack web developer, you might need to store data somewhere and then access it later. Web storage is used for this purpose where you can store sessions, cookies, and cached data in the browser.
As a full-stack web developer, you also need to understand the benefit of relational data and in-memory data stores such as Redis and Memcached.
To efficiently understand the databases, you must know about NoSQL databases and when to choose a certain one. A full-stack web developer has to link these databases to one of the back-end programming languages that they had already chosen.
4. Version Control system
A version control system is a category of software tools that assist a software team in managing the changes made in source code over a period of time. A special kind of database version control system keeps a record of every modification made to the application files. These files can be recalled anytime when required.
The most commonly used version control system is GIT. It will help a web developer to successfully collaborate with other web developers working on the same project and update parts of the code where necessary without creating a big mess. You might not realize the importance of GIT until you use it.
5. The architecture of Web Applications
If you already know how to put your code and the data in order, then here comes the crucial part which is web architecture. As a full-stack web developer, you should know how to separate specific files, where to store large files, and much more. You have to work on the optimization of the webs and web apps and gather as much information about platforms as a service you could.
6. Web Servers
If you have come this far, you probably already know how to tackle servers in the earlier steps. A web server is used to serve the files from web pages to users. It is a program that uses a stateless application protocol called HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) but keeps in mind that HTTP protocol can be breached easily, so if the web is storing some severe data, kindly reconsider and use more subject-specific protocol.
Here the in-memory step is to know about the limitations and different available configuration options to write applications and to find out the differences between web servers.
7. Web Sockets
The WebSocket-like API is an advanced technology that is used for a two-way communication session between the operator’s browser and a server. APIs such as RESTful are also used in this step, and it is beneficial to know the web developer’s tool belt about it.
8. Machine Learning
Machine learning is the top-rated topic since 2018 for full-stack web developers. As we wonder about the future, there will not be a particular industry in the world untouched by this machine learning. It uses frameworks such as Tensorflow.js.
Regardless of the type of web development, you are going to learn, and a web developer should always consider adding machine learning capabilities to their skills to prepare for future demands.
A combination of machine learning and programming language like JavaScript makes it easy to enter this new zone of the tech industry
9. Taking courses
Many young beginners hesitate to join an online boot camp for courses in full-stack web development. Many people refuse to take a course as they consider them to be expensive. But the key to be successful is to keep learning. No one knows everything, as so does a full-stack web developer. But I can suggest some websites where you can take a course in full-stack web development that will only cost you a couple of bucks.
10. Practice
We all know that practice makes a man perfect, similarly practicing the newly learned web designing must be hard, but only practical exposure in this field can make someone perfect. Understanding all of the necessary technologies such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Back end programming, databases, API, and HTTP need tons of practice.
For practicing, you must know; the right way to structure code, the right data structures to use, the right means to separate files, the environment to host large media files, and the location of each computational task.
CONCLUSION:
As soon as you are done, practicing starts applying to different companies. Make sure your resume is good enough to catch the eyes of employers, and it has information about all the programming languages that you know and all the unique things that you have learned so far. Add all of the work that you have done and all the courses that you have taken so far to your resume. Make your portfolio. It will definitely put you in a better spot as a full-stack web developer.
Just imagine calling yourself a full-stack web developer, it already sounds so much fun! Right? We know it will be hard to learn all of this, but the reward, in the end, is definitely worth it.
