The 2019 Road Map To Becoming a Full Stack Web Developer

Becoming a full stack web developer seems an intimidating task, especially if you are completely new to the field of coding. As a beginner, you might think that you have a whole lot to learn within a short span of time. The languages, frameworks, libraries and databases along with everything else required is a whole long list of tools of full stack web development. If you start attempting to learn everything at the same time is setting yourself up to FAIL spectacularly.  The easiest way to begin any work is to strategize with a road map. A road map is the best way to kick start your attempt to become a full stack web developer.

Tackle each layer one by one. Your objective should be to learn the bare minimum skill set so that you can start experimenting and honing your learned skills. Once you have mastered the basics, you can go ahead and learn full stack technologies which will give you an edge over other people. Follow a structured path and equip yourself steadily rather than trying to learn all over the web development spectrum.

This road map has multiple sections and is the go-to guide for organizing and selecting technologies to learn. The article mainly benefits the noobs but is also useful to the professional coders looking to become a full stack web developer. If you already have knowledge of some of the technologies we are going to talk about here, skip to the sections that will be useful to you. Feel free to customize this road map to suit your needs.  

Front end technologies roadmap for a full stack web developer
You can start by learning the technologies required for the presentation or the front end layer.  Follow this roadmap strategy if you wish to master front end development requisites. There are again the must learn, should learn and the value additions.

Basic languages

HTML- the HyperText Markup Language is the most basic and must know for any website you are contriving. You define and structure the content of a website.

CSS- this is used for styling websites and adding layouts, fonts and colours.

SQL- Structured Query Language, this is a basic language that is used for database management.

Front-end frameworks

BootStrap- An open-source toolkit for developing responsive, mobile first projects. Uses HTML,CSS and JavaScript. It helps design the website faster and easier. It has design templates for forms, buttons, tables, navigation etc., It also supports JavaScript plugins.

AngularJS- This a structural framework for dynamic web apps. The JavaScript-based open source web framework is maintained by Google and a community of corporations and individuals. They address challenges in a single-page application. It allows usage of HTML as the template language. It data-binding and dependency reduce the amount of coding required substantially.

ReactJS- A JavaScript library maintained by Facebook and a group of companies as well as individual developers. React is optimal for fetching fast-changing data that needs to be recorded. It is used for building user interfaces for single page applications. It allows users to create reusable UI components.

VueJS-This is yet another open-source JavaScript framework for single page applications and UIs.It is very compact in size and high on performance. The best option for new coders, it offers hand-picked the choicest features of other frameworks like Angular and React. It is known as the most approachable framework today.

Other programming languages required by a full stack developer:

You need to be proficient in multiple programming languages as most of the core processes for any business have to be written in them. It is not possible to master all of them in a short time, so we have a list of languages for you to begin with.

JavaScript-  It is a just-in-time compiled programming language. It helps in adding dynamic features to your website is the predominant usage of JavaScript. This is used for both front end and back end operations. The JavaScript basics are easy to learn. Many of the front-end as well as back-end frameworks, like NodeJS and AngularJS,  use JavaScript. It is widely used for aplication like chatbots using full stack technology.

TypeScript- Developed and maintained by Microsoft for development of large applications. A prerequisite if you want to learn Angular, this has recently become very popular. This is an addition to JavaScript and is always used along with JavaScript for features like type checking.

Python- This is a high-level, general-purpose language. It can be used on a server to create web applications, mathematics and server scripting. It connects to databases to read and manipulate files. It was designed for readability and runs on an interpreter system. It can also be used in a procedural, object-oriented or functional way.

Ruby- A dynamic, open source language, it is easy to learn and code. It focuses on productivity and simplicity.it can be used for web applications, servers, system utilities, backups and database works.

PHP- The most popular scripting language, it can be embedded into HTML. PHP scripts can only be interpreted on a server where PHP is installed. It is used to collect form data, send or receive cookies amongst other functions.

Back end technologies roadmap for a full stack web developer.
Developers need a back end framework so that an application can be created. It is the script-side of a dynamic application. A lot of options are available for back end frameworks.

Express-Express.js is a framework and is used as a web application for Node.js. It is a module of the NodeJS. It can be used for apps that are based on servers that will listen for connection requests from clients. It can be used for single-page, multi-page, and hybrid web applications. It is fast, easy to use and assertive.

NodeJS-This is an open-source, cross-platform in nature, that is runs across various platforms. it is a JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript outside a browser.

Django- This is a high-level Python web framework that follows model-template-view architecture. It is used to simplify the creation of complex, database-driven websites. It is fast and promotes a clean design.

Ruby on Rails- This is a server-side web application framework based on the Ruby language. It provides default structures for databases, web services and web pages. It uses model-view-controller architecture. This is comparatively hard to learn as you have to learn multiple and independent concepts.

Database systems roadmap.
In today's scenario, there are tons of databases. Each company develops its own databases according to their requirements.

The objective of this roadmap is to learn and become a database administrator.

MySQL, SQLite, Postgres- These are Relational Database management system, and the data is stored in table-like schemes. This is good to store business data. These use SQL

MongoDB, Cassandra, Apache storm, Sphinx- These are the NoSQL databases. Their only commonality is that they do not use a relational database scheme. This type of database covers a wide range of technologies and can be used to find key-value DB, graph DBs, streaming DBs etc.,

VoltDB, MemSQL- These are a new kind of database, the NewSQL. They follow the relational scheme but instead of disks, they use memory. the advantage is that they outperform the traditional RDBMS but the limited amount of memory available is definitely a downside to this type of database.

Recommended additional skills for a full stack web developer.
Git- The most popular distributed version control system. It is fast and efficient. It has the capacity to handle small to very large projects. It is used to coordinate between programmers as well as track any changes made to any code stored in its repository. Check out the git basics before getting started. GitHub is the most widely used code repository and thus a must learn for an aspiring coder.

Machine Learning- A subset of AI, it is a top trending topic in 2018, machine learning is now being incorporated into various industries. It has entered the web development field as well. This provides the ability to learn and improve without being explicitly programmed. This is a good-to-learn skill for a full stack web developer.

SSH- The secure shell protocol is used to operate network services securely over an unsecured network. The SSH provides a secured remote login from one computer to another. It ensures the privacy and integrity of the data.

HTTP/HTTPS-HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol used by the world wide web. it defines how messages are transmitted, the actions taken by the Web servers and browsers when responding to commands. HTTPS is the secured version of HTTP. Here, the communication protocol is encrypted using Transport Layer Security. It ensures protection against man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdropping.

Linux command-line basic-Having this skill is not a must but one you should definitely have. It is not necessarily easy or hard to learn and saves a lot of time. The job that otherwise consumes a lot of time when done manually, like organizing items on the back-end will be over very fast.

Data structures and algorithms-Data structures are just ways to store the data while an algorithm is a generic approach methodology to solve a problem or requirement. Every programmer needs to be familiar with these concepts. By themselves, they are not a core skill, but the more intuitive you are about these, the easier it is to solve issues or add requirements. The impacts are felt in efficiency, scalability and performance of an application. As a full stack developer, this will help immensely.

Character encoding-This is a must learn if you are planning on developing global applications. If there is no proper character encoding, you might end up with unreadable text on display, the data will not be properly processed and your content may not be found by the search engines.

Use this road map and start by equipping yourself on these basic to intermediate skills required to become a successful full stack developer. Keep adding to your skills to give more value- addition to your role and by extension to your organization.