How to Become a Full Stack Developer

Do you want to know how to become a full stack developer? Perfect! Then you’re are at the right place and must explore full stack developer roadmap 2021.

Becoming a full-stack developer is a little tough and confusing if you’re a beginner in programming. But you can easily become a successful full-stack developer if you’re following the ultimate roadmap.

By keeping beginner’s in my mind, I’ve created this Guide on “How to Become a Full stack Developer”. So that you can easily start your career and launch a dream job, business, freelancing or whatever you want to become after having a great piece of knowledge in full-stack development.

As a beginner, you might have few questions like

What is a Full-stack Developer?
How to Become a Full stack developer?
What is the full-stack developer course?
What are Full-stack Developer skills and responsibilities?
And many more questions.

Don’t worry after exploring Full stack developer Roadmap 2021, You will find answers to all the questions.

Are you curious to know how to become a full stack developer? Let’s dive into the full stack developer roadmap for 2021.

What is full stack developer?

Full-stack development is developing and designing the front end layer, back end layer and database layer of websites and applications. A full-stack developer is a professional web developer or engineer who has expert knowledge of the front end, back end and database of web or application.

Front end development is a client-side process that creates visible parts of a website or application and an expert in this is called front end developer. The back end developer handles the server-side process, such as creating back end parts of a website or application.

And the person who has a great piece of knowledge of both the front and back end is called a full stack Developer. It’s your choice what you want to be only front or back end developer or you want to be a master in both i.e. Full-stack Developer.

I hope now you got an idea of What is Full Stack Developer is. Let’s move further to explore a little more about the responsibilities and how to become a full stack developer.

Responsibilities of Full Stack Developer

Full-stack Developer creates an end to end projects from designing visible parts to creating databases of a website or application. To perform the full stack development job efficiently, the following responsibilities are included,

Designing and developing front end architecture of website or app.
Designing user interactive environment on web pages to make visually rich.
Designing and developing back end architecture of websites or apps.
Creating, editing and managing database servers to ensure functionality.
Deciding on the most relevant tech stack required to create a product.
Making applications or websites mobile friendly and ensuring responsiveness.
Testing, finding bugs, troubleshooting and upgrading the software.
Meetups with a graphic designer to meet the required web designing features.
Ensuring data protection by implementing security settings.
Documentation of product and finally deploying the websites or applications through cloud services.

This is the list of some responsibilities that you have to perform as full stack developer. You might think that these are hard tasks. Yes! these tasks seem to be difficult for you unless you do these on a regular basis. Once you’ve working knowledge of full-stack development, these tasks will become easy.

Full Stack Developer Courses

When it comes to full-stack developer courses, then you can go with professional degrees courses like

Bachelor’s of Technology in Computer Science (B.tech CSE)
Bachelor’s of Technology in Information Technology ( B.tech IT)

Or you can go with simple courses related to computer science that is

Bachelor’s of Computer Application(BCA)
BSC CS
BSC IT
Diploma courses for Computer Science

If you want to get a job in IT companies or other sectors, then you need a relevant degree or courses along with full stack developer skills. But if your dream is to start your own business or you want to become a freelance full stack developer, then no degree is required, you just need a strong full stack development skillset.

Till then, we’ve discussed What is full stack developer is, its responsibilities and full stack developer courses, If you’ve questions ask in the comment section.

Great! Let’s have a look at full stack developer skills!

Full Stack Developer Skills

There are pools of jobs available for full stack developers and there are lots of competition as well. Multiple candidates apply for a single position. Hence companies take interviews to select the best one. For selection, companies follow the recruitment process and hire only those candidates who have the required eligibility criteria plus a powerful set of skills.

Now, If you want to beat the competition, then along with the required degree, you must have to focus on building strong full stack developer skills. And one more thing, only technical skills will not help you get your dream job, but you also need to work on soft skills.

Don’t worry we will discuss all the skills that you need to become a successful full stack developer.

Sounds great, let’s explore full stack developer skills!

Technical Skills Required to be a full Stack Developer

To perform the job of full stack developer more efficiently and accurately, technical skills are required. Technical skills include front end, back end, database, version control and hands-on experience on project management tools.

Front-End: Html, Html 5, Javascript, JQuery and CSS3 are front end programming languages that help you to create the front end( visible parts) of a website or application.

Back-End: The programming languages like Ruby on Rails, PHP, Angular 2, Node.js and .Net are required for the back end development of products.

Database: Every website or application has its database where all the data is stored and databases like MySQL, Mongo DB, Couch DB, MySQL helps to create, edit or manage databases.

Version Control: It is the process of tracking and managing the modification or changes in software codes. There are many version control software like GIT, Grunt, Debub and subversion and will help you to track the modification in software coding.

Project Management Tools: Great understanding of project management tools like Basecamp, Jira, Trello, Redmine and Teamwork will help you to become a successful full stack developer.

Additional Skills: Apart from the above technical skill, there are some additional skills such as machine learning, HTTP/HTTPS, Linux command, data structures and algorithms, and character coding. You can also learn these additional skills to add more points to your full-stack developer profile.

Soft Skills

No doubt, to become a successful full stack developer the technical is required but also don’t forget to work on your soft skills. To get or perform a full stack developer job both technical and soft skills are equally important.

Here is the list of some soft skills that will help you in the journey of full stack development

Strong communication and presentation skills
Time and multiple project management
Creativity, passion and dedication towards work
Self-learning nature
Leadership qualities and high patience level

I hope now you have an idea of what is full stack developer is, its responsibilities, and what full-stack developer courses are. We have also discussed the full stack developer skills that you need to become a successful full stack developer.

Now, you might have a question that how to become a full stack developer. To become a full stack developer follow a full stack developer roadmap 2021.

Let’s move further and explore the full stack developer roadmap for 2021.

Full Stack Developer RoadMap 2021:

You can become a successful full-stack developer by following the roadmap 2021 that includes the top 11 steps.

Step 1: Learn Basics of Web Development

The major error students make is to directly jump into web development without knowing the basics of web development. If you’re learning any skills, then the first thing you need to do is learn fundamentals and it will help you to make a strong base of skills.

Your first step is to learn the basics of web development that includes CS fundamentals, practical developer skills such as HTTP, APIs, command line, SSH, Git, cloud development. Along with this, you need to know the basics of programming languages. Usually, JavaScript or phyton are used for development and these are most popular in the world of web development.

Step 2: Learn Front-End Technologies

The front development is the client-side part of a website, i.e the visible part of the website a user can see, interact with graphics, and perform actions online such as register or login to a website. More creative ideas are required to create the front layer of a website. You should learn the following front-end technologies to accomplish the design, look and feel of a website:

HTML 5: It stands for hyper-text markup language and is the most basic language for web development. HTML helps you to define the different parts of the website and the structure of the content.

CSS 3: It stands for cascading style sheet and helps you to style Html elements. It provides various style options to make your website more creative such as adding fonts, layouts, grids and colours.

JavaScript: It is a scripting language and helps you to make your website alive. JavaScript helps you to create motion and graphics on a website. It will not only help you to design the front layer of a website but it also helps to write code for backend servers.

Are you enjoying the guide on ” How to become a full stack developer”?

Step 3: Choose and Learn Front End Framework

To attract more traffic websites need interaction and integrated UI and only knowledge of front end technologies will not help you to design interactive UI. For this, you need front end frameworks. There are several JavaScript frameworks and libraries that will help you for developing websites. Out of all front end frameworks, Angular, React and Vue is the most popular. Either you can choose one to learn or all.

Start learning one from the above JavaScript frameworks and practice enough to achieve hands-on experience on it. Once you’ve enough knowledge of one JavaScript framework, it will be easy for you to learn other frameworks.

Step 4: Begin and Practice Front end Development

After learning, front end technologies and frameworks, you will have enough knowledge to develop the front layer of the website. Use the technologies and framework to design the front end and it will help you to gain more practical knowledge of front end technologies. Keep practising the front end technologies and frameworks until you become a master of these.

Step 5: Learn back end Technologies

After having enough experience in front end development, move to the next step i.e. learn back end technologies. A dynamic connection between the front end and the database of a website is called the back end layer.

There are different backend technologies that will help you to create back-end layers such as PHP, Java, Ruby, Phyton and many more.

PHP: It is an open source and most demanded server-side scripting language. It helps you to design the back-end layer of a website or application. You can easily embed PHP into Html language.

Java: It is another open-source back end development programming language. Java is based on the write-once run anywhere technique and this allows you to run your application or website on any platform.

Ruby: It is a dynamic programming language and open-source. As compared to other back end languages Ruby is easy to learn and its primary purpose is productivity and simplicity.

Python: It is a high-level programming language and is used to make connections between databases. You can use it on the server-side to create a website, applications and server scripting.

Step 6: Learn Back-end Frameworks and Practice

As we have discussed that you need front-end frameworks to empower websites along with front-end technologies. In the same way, you need back-end frameworks as only back-end technologies do not design the server-side. There are lots of back-end frameworks are available in the market and Express, Node Js and Django are the most popular. Start learning these frameworks and practice more and more to become an expert in creating back-end layers.

Step 7: Learn Database Technologies

Now, you know that how to create the front and back end layers of a website and you’re left with only one layer, i.e. database layer. A database is basically a warehouse of information where all the data related to a website is getting stored. To design a database, there are lots of options available and every company and organization use their own database.

The most popular database technologies are MySQL, Mongo DB, Couch DB and MS SQL. Give proper time to learn these database technologies and practice how to create, edit, delete, update, retrieve and apply other operations on the database.

Step 8: Learn and Choose Perfect Stack

There are lots of tech stacks available in the market, and every company uses its own stack. The full-stack developer has a wide range of choices to learn tech stack. The choice of the stack depends upon your individual goals, what performance you want from a product and the requirements of the product and company.

Tech stacks are very famous because of their capabilities and easy-to-use features. Here is the list of the three most popular tech stacks.

MERN Stack
LAMP Stack,
MEAN Stack

Let’s have a brief look at these three tech stacks so that you will get an idea.

MERN Stack: If you want to become a master of full-stack development then this tech stack is for you. MERN stack is based upon JavaScript technologies and the following are the major components of this stack.

Mongo DB
Express
React
Node.js

LAMP Stack: It is quite an old and famous tech stack and you can start learning it. The following are the major components of the LAMP stack:

Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP

MEAN Stack: If you want to develop robust technologies then the MEAN stack is the perfect choice for you. Here are the four major components of the MEAN stack

Mongo DB
Express
Angular.js
Nodejs

Step 9: Practice Version Control and Product Management Tools

You must have a great understanding of version control software such as GIT, Grunt, Xdebug, and subversion. Apart from this, you need hands-on experiences in project management tools like Basecamp, Jira, Trello, Redmine and teamwork. Start practising version control and product management tools and will help you to perform a software developer job more efficiently and accurately.

Step 10: Learn, Practice, Analyze, Implement and Repeat the process

This step will help you to become a master in software development. Firstly, learn software development technologies from a very basic level and then practice enough to be mastered. After that analyze your weak points and then work on these points and implement these points for developing the project. Again, repeat this process to become a successful software developer.

Step 11: Bonus Tips For Success!

The next important step of the full stack developer roadmap 2021 is to learn some tips and strategies to become a successful full stack developer. I would like to give you some bonus tips for how to become a full stack developer.

You can learn full-stack development by sitting at your home and no need to go anywhere else.
Use google and YouTube to search tutorials for full stack development technologies and then learn them.
Practice is the key to success and do more and more practice with passion, dedication and concentration.
Apart from technical skills, don’t forget to focus on soft skills, as I mentioned earlier in this guide.
In beginning, it will be difficult for you to learn software developer skills, but never give up, keep learning and keep growing.
One more thing, sometimes we have some questions in our mind, but we feel afraid to ask them. Ask if you have any queries in your mind and I would like to give you the most trustworthy career guidance.

Final Thoughts

If you have decided to become a software developer, then stop looking at here and there. And just start working on your dream and never look back after deciding. It’s really brilliant decision if you’re thinking about software development. Once you learn the required skills, you will have lots of career options, you can start your dream job, start your development business online by investing nothing, or you can become a freelancer.

Have you got the answer that how to become a full stack developer? Let me know in the comment section.

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