My Journey to becoming a Full Stack Web Developer
Becoming a full stack developer can be a “search in the dark” for few people. With the need for mastering technologies over various domains, where to start and how to proceed are the commonly heard questions from rookies. In this article, i will share my journey of becoming a full stack developer.
Before getting started
As an intro, i learnt on what a full stack developer does and how it’s different from the so-called normal developers. As a note, this field requires you to master and get hands on on various technologies. Sticking onto a single language/framework won’t work out for a full stack — so be ready to learn.
I started from the bottom
Since a full stack developer works on complete application, I started from something simple and less technical like UI. I learnt HTML, CSS and JavaScript and got hands on. I mainly focused on developing full fledged static websites with complete responsiveness. UI would be fairly quick to learn since there is not much geeky stuff going on here.
My next phase of getting full stack
My next phase was learning server side coding. This is where things got more technical. Learn about computer servers, basics of networking and protocols etc. As a rookie, my choice was PHP considering it’s simplicity. There are many JS based frameworks in demand out there which suits for newbies as well — like NodeJS. Once the server side coding was done, I connect my UI to server to make a full stack app. To get used to the concepts, I made a simple app that sends and returns data from the server without much UI. I even played out trying to figure out various operations — Getting data (GET Method), Sending data (POST Method) etc.
A little more addition
Learning about databases — I started with SQL . As a starting, I would recommend SQL. SQL will be fairly easy to learn due to it’s easy syntax. Make a database and connect your server to Database to fetch data. I made a simple app user identification app which interacts with databases and performs read / write operations.
A big pause
Once I got a sight into all these concepts, I took a pause and developed a full fledged app with proper UI and server. Working on projects brought me more knowledge and learning line by line. Since it is a vast field, working on bigger projects will be beneficial considering there is a lot to remember and understand.
Getting Industry Ready
This is what made me got used to the industry much quicker — Understanding and Learning what is going on in Industry. I took up various studies and project works on the following below topics :
- Cloud Computing (mainly deploying servers, pipelines, Databases etc.)
- DevOps / Scrum (Very important)
- Software Engineering and Concepts (SDLC, SRS, Testing practices etc.)
- Code Management and Source Control (GitHub)
Thank you for reading!
Useful Links:
- Find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishnuu0399
- Know more about Me: https://bit.ly/vishnu-u
- Learn Full Stack Development at: https://www.w3schools.com
