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FullStackWebDev_CourseReader_FirstChapter1

This document introduces full-stack web development, explaining the roles of front-end and back-end developers. Front-end development focuses on the visual presentation and user interaction of websites, while back-end development involves data management and server management. It also discusses the importance of frameworks and libraries that streamline the development process for both front-end and back-end tasks.

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huongdtth
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9 views

FullStackWebDev_CourseReader_FirstChapter1

This document introduces full-stack web development, explaining the roles of front-end and back-end developers. Front-end development focuses on the visual presentation and user interaction of websites, while back-end development involves data management and server management. It also discusses the importance of frameworks and libraries that streamline the development process for both front-end and back-end tasks.

Uploaded by

huongdtth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Class 1 Introduction to Full-Stack Web Development

CLASS 1
1. Introduction to Full Stack Web Development

1.1 What is a Full Stack?

A stack refers to all of the components needed to run an application. This includes frameworks
and components internal to an application, such as UI frameworks, MVC frameworks, data
access libraries, etc. It can also include things external to an application, such as the operating
system, application server, and database.

A full-stack web developer is a developer that has general knowledge across a wide breadth of
technologies and platforms as well as in-depth experience and specialization in a couple of those
concepts. For the most part, there are two general fields that make up a full-stack developer’s
skillset: front-end development and back-end development.

Front-End Development
This skillset involves the actual presentation of your website—how the information in your
website is laid out in browsers and on mobile devices as well. A dedicated front-end developer
will be very experienced working with HTML and CSS as well as the scripting language,
JavaScript. With these languages, the developer can very efficiently manipulate the information
on a website to make it appealing and effective.

Everything that you actually see on a website—the layout, the positioning of text and images,
colors, fonts, buttons, and so on—are all factors that the front-end developer must consider.

The main goal of a front-end developer is to provide the platform for visitors to interact with, a
platform which provides and receives information. This means some developers will be well-
versed in web design and using software such as Photoshop and Illustrator to create graphics
and themed layouts.

Additional skillsets of a front-end developer could include user experience design and user
interface design, skills which help a team evaluate the best methods of displaying and collecting
information. A front-end developer who possesses these design skills is potentially more
valuable as they can identify the look and feel of a site while assessing the technical capabilities
of such a design at the same time.

1. Introduction to Full Stack Web Development 1


Class 1 Introduction to Full-Stack Web Development

Back-End Development
Create, edit/update and recollection of data are some of the processes that are most often
associated with back-end development. Some examples of common scripting languages used are
JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, and Python. With these languages, a back-end developer can create
algorithms and business logic to manipulate the data that was received in front-end
development.

This means that a back-end developer must be able to write code to receive the information
input from the user and also save it somewhere – like in a database.

There are two main types of databases:

➢ Relational (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL)


➢ Non-relational (Mongo, Oracle, Couchbase)

The language used for database management is SQL, which helps the developer interact with
the database.

The concepts might sound foreign, but just understand that there are different database
management systems based on convenience and use.

Another component of back-end development is server management, which are applications that
host the database and serve up the website. An alternative to knowing how to manage servers is
to use cloud-based platforms that provide the infrastructure, like Heroku or Amazon Web
Services.

Understanding server management allows a developer to troubleshoot slow applications and


even determine how scalable their websites are to include more users.

1. Introduction to Full Stack Web Development 2


Class 1 Introduction to Full-Stack Web Development

Frameworks
Rather than having to develop complex proprietary code every time for creating different
websites, frameworks have become popular resources to make many processes more efficient
and convenient.

Libraries like jQuery are extremely popular for front-end developers using Javascript, as they
can implement various functions that other developers have already cultivated and tested.

Javascript frameworks like AngularJS and EmberJS solve many of the challenges faced by front-
end developers by developing conventions that can easily be implemented with any website.

On the backend, there are frameworks like Express for Node.js (JavaScript), Rails for the
programming language of Ruby, Django for Python, and CakePHP for working with PHP.

The main purpose of frameworks is to make a developer’s job easier by developing a set of
conventions that can be adopted for many of the different processes involved in creating a
website—from how information is displayed to how it is stored and accessed in the database.

1. Introduction to Full Stack Web Development 3

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