Full Stack Developer Roadmap (2023)

Who is a Full Stack Developer?

A professional who knows the technologies to work on developing both the front-end (client software) and back-end (server software) of a website or web application is called a Full Stack developer.

From the User Interface to managing databases or servers, a Full Stack developer is responsible for the entire development of a web application or site right from the start.

In simple terms, a Full Stack developer manages a website's client and server-side during its development process. This Full Stack developer roadmap will help you understand the whole process of becoming a Full Stack developer and all the skills and technologies involved.

If you want to become a successful Full Stack developer and learn the key technologies and skills, then you should check out the Full Stack Developer Course that will give you all the theoretical and practical exposure along with the required training by skilled industry professionals to help you shape a successful career in this field.

Below are some of the key responsibilities of a Full Stack developer:

• Working with the design team for the development of the website or web application
• Regularly optimizing the software through debugging and testing
• Creating back-end databases and servers
• To create, test, and maintain the responsive application designs
• Using advanced technology to thoroughly optimize the software
• Client communication (understanding what the client wants/taking regular insights regarding the product)

Roadmap for Full Stack development—A step-by-step Guide

If you’re looking for a career in full-stack development, you first need to get in-depth knowledge about basic programming languages, which involve both front-end and back-end technologies.

Apart from the languages, you need to understand the working of front-end and backend frameworks and libraries and manage databases and servers.

Once you excel in all the full stack technologies and know how to use them to create an effective and efficient website or web application, you will easily get an edge over others.

This article will walk you through the complete full-stack developer roadmap.

Front-end Technologies

The front end of an application can be described as the graphical user interface that the users interact with.

For example, the layout, buttons, text elements, etc., comprise the front end of an application. Front-end developers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as their primary languages. To be a successful Full Stack developer, you must learn basic front-end technologies. These include:

HTML: Used for structuring the website content. Acts as the backbone of the front end.

CSS: Used for layouts and styling (fonts, colors, etc.). It styles the front end so that it looks appealing to the user.

JavaScript: Provides functionalities to the front-end elements. For example, clicking the submit button submits/sends the form data to the backend after validating the inputs on the front-end side.

Back-end technologies

Backend development refers to a process done for server-side development. (It is referred to as “server-side” development because the creation of everything goes behind the scenes of a website or application that the user can't see.)

This process focuses on databases, website architecture, and scripting.

It will be in charge of establishing a connection to the database and transferring data to the front end for presentation to the user after being prepared, etc. Backend code is responsible for merging, filtering, or otherwise altering data while it is being retrieved from the database.

A few common back-end technologies include:

Java: A programming language used for developing enterprise-scale web applications.

Python: Another programming language often used for data analysis and data visualization.

SQL: A database query language used for backend database management.

PHP: One of the backend programming languages used to manage data (from a database) and handle frontend requests.

However, you don't need to learn all these programming languages and technologies, but you must be thoroughly skilled in at least one of them. The full stack developer roadmap describes that you should also have a good understanding of working with different databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.

Knowledge of tech stacks for front-end and back-end development is essential in becoming a good Full Stack developer and is one of the most crucial steps on the full-stack developer roadmap.

A Complete Roadmap for Full Stack Developer

Choosing a Tech Stack

The tech stack you use solely depends on what you want to achieve from the product, what kind of performance you expect from the web application, and what the client wants, amongst other factors.

Regarding Full Stack development, there are several tech stacks for both front-end and back-end development. The most common tech stacks with simple features are:

MERN Stack: MERN stands for MongoDB, Express, React, and Node, after the four key technologies that make up the stack.

MongoDB — a NoSQL document database. Unlike a SQL database, it uses key-value pairs instead of columns and rows to store data.

Express(.js) — a Node.js web framework used to build backend apps and APIs using JavaScript.

React(.js) — a client-side JavaScript framework used to build the user interface.

Node(.js) — the premier JavaScript web server.

MEAN Stack: Made up of Angular (front-end framework), Express (back-end framework), Node.js (back-end run-time environment), and MongoDB (database), MEAN Stack is a full-stack JavaScript open-source solution that helps developers use better practices while working with popular JavaScript components.

LAMP Stack: One of the most popular tech stacks for web service stacks, LAMP consists of 4 open-course components that support one another.

L= Linux: An open-source operating system.

A = Apache: Popularly used web server software.

M = MySQL: Widely used open-source database.

P = PHP: Server-side open-source scripting language.

Backend Technology Roadmap

Back-end development deals with the server side of the web application. This means managing everything that the users don't see—from managing the databases and services to testing and debugging; back-end development involves creating components and features on the back-end side of a web application.

As per the full stack developer roadmap, to become a good Full Stack developer, you must be well-versed in back-end Frameworks that make the development process fast, secure, and scalable.

Here are some of the most common back-end Frameworks

Django: Based on Python and used by Instagram, Pinterest, and Coursera.

Laravel: Based on PHP and used by Deltanet Travel, Neighborhood Lender.

Ruby on Rails: Based on Ruby and used by Shopify and ZendDesk.

As per the latest statistics, Lavarel and Django are two of the most common backend Frameworks used by Full Stack developers across the globe.

Front-end technology roadmap

Front-end development deals with the overall look and design of a website. A Full Stack developer must be familiar with key front-end technologies and frameworks such as:

Front-end languages:

• HTML: Used to structure a webpage.
• CSS: Used to style a webpage.
• Javascript: Used to make the webpage interactive.
• TypeScript: Superset of JavaScript that adds more helpful features to program robust programs.
• JQuery: A javascript library with various functions to make front-end development easy.

Front-end Frameworks:

• React: Easy to learn and allows you to reuse the prebuilt components in your code.
• Angular: Allows real-time model-view synchronization and helps make quick changes to the application at any given time.
• VueJs: Suitable for both simple as well as complex applications.

Remember, this isn’t an exhaustive list, and a good developer is always ready to learn and work with new technologies per the project's requirements.

Databases

In any web application, a database is a place where all the data of your project is stored and managed.

An in-depth understanding of databases is vital for any Full Stack developer as it is one of the key aspects of web application development. You must know how to work with databases like SQL, MySQL, and Cassandra, among others.

While database management systems like MySQL are best for storing and organizing business-related data, Cassandra is mainly used to find key-value, graphs and streaming databases.

Version Control

Moving further on the full stack developer roadmap, it is very important to track and manage all the required changes to the product's code if you want to become a skilled Full Stack Developer.

Each application is revised several times before finally going live. In this case, it is essential to keep track of all the revisions that have been made. This is done through Version control which helps you keep track of your project and allows you to manage the changes in an accurate and timely manner.

Coding can often be complex, and if you get confused in your code, you can use software like Git to help you track your code. To become an efficient Full Stack developer, you must learn GIT or any other VCS (Version Control Systems) like GitLab, bitbucket, etc.

GitHub is a popular website and cloud-based service which uses Git to manage large projects. You can also use GitHub to host your development projects.

Additional Skills

While knowing the technologies and programming languages from your full stack developer roadmap is quite brilliant, there are a few additional skills that a full stack developer must have. Here are some additional skills that can take your understanding of the stack to the next level.

• Data structures and algorithms - Basics are basics, and there is nothing more essential than understanding core algorithms and how the data is organized in a computing system. From Arrays, Trees, and Linked lists to Hash maps and time and space complexities, there is a world of data structures that a full stack developer must be familiar with.

• Git - Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system that can easily handle everything from tiny to very large projects. According to a Stack Overflow developer survey in 2018, over 87% of developers use Git.

• SSH - Networking isn’t just done to get the right connections in real life. Imagine you built two sophisticated systems capable of doing endless computations. How great would it be without a secure, encrypted way to manage and handle these applications? Not so great, actually. An SSH connection provides robust security and encryptions and can manage connections remotely, even through an unsecured network.

• HTTP/HTTPS - HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the core of any data exchange that happens over the internet. So what’s with the added ‘S’ in the end and calling it a new technology? Well, HTTPS is known as the secure version of HTTP. It uses the TLS (transport layer security) to provide a much more secure communication experience over the internet.

• Linux command-line basics - Most server-side machines use Linux as their preferred operating system. Yes, it's true! Linux is considered one of the most dynamic and secure operating systems with the best kind of user account control a developer can expect. So learning basic command-line syntaxes is probably the best decision you will ever make in your quest to ace the server-side aspect of the stack.

• Net and asp.net framework - Knowing these two technologies is like knowing all the tethers of an application that runs on both the client and server sides. NET Developer is an expert who can construct and manage all the stacks of an application meaning Front-end, Back-end, database, APIs, and even version control systems.

• Character encoding - If you want to become a full-stack developer, you probably would have heard of US-ASCII or UTF-8. Most developers have a basic idea of character encodings and how they differ.

Check out this link if you want to learn more about how encoding works or the history of character encoding.

• Machine Learning - While machine learning is an ‘out of stack’ concept, there does exist a thing called a ‘Machine Learning Full Stack Developer’. Machine Learning Developers are the ones who understand and are familiar with each stack of Web technologies to tackle the problem so that they can improve the architecture and scalability of their machine learning services.

Note that you don’t need to be proficient in machine learning when starting your journey in development.

See More

• Full Stack Developer Resume
• Full Stack Developer Job Description