When you work with an application, who do you normally think is responsible for it? I’m sure you would think about a web developer. Although you’re partially right, a Full Stack developer is the umbrella term for the people who develop full-fledged applications.
Who is a Full-Stack Developer?
Let’s say you’re using your Instagram application. Every time you refresh, new content is loaded on your screen. You can like a picture, add new ones, search for profiles and do so much more. Although it provides a seamless user experience, there’s a lot that goes on in the backend. HTTP requests are made to the Instagram servers to retrieve and load information. This is facilitated with the help of backend frameworks.
Typically every application consists of the front-end, the backend, and the database.
A Full Stack Developer is associated with the creation of an application from its start to finish. He designs the front-end and the backend of an application while ensuring its efficiency, reliability, and other crucial features.
Skills of a Full Stack Developer
Now that you know what a full stack developer does, let’s look at the skills required to become one.
Front-end Languages and Frameworks
HTML and CSS
HTML short of Hypertext markup language governs the appearance of text/images on the screen. It formats the text as headings, paragraphs, pop-ups and so on. It typically consists of tags that give a different meaning to the text in a document structure.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a style sheet that allows to alter and style different web components for font, size, spacing, etc. It makes the content on the webpage more decorative.
JavaScript
It is a powerful client-side programming language mainly used for enhancing user interaction with the application. It offers several libraries and frameworks like React, Angular, Vue, and JQuery. A full stack developer needs to be proficient in one or more of these tools.
Backend Technologies and Frameworks
- JavaScript and its environments like NodeJS and ExpressJS. Node is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment that allows developers to create server-side tools and JavaScript applications. Knowledge of the basic command line like npm (Node Package Manager) is essential.
- Java, in particular, was built from the ground up to be run on the server-side. Popular Java frameworks include Spring and Java Server faces.
- Python is the most popularly used language. It is flexible and easy to use. We use Python frameworks like Django and Flask for backend development. Django is a high-level Python web framework that enables rapid development of websites. It is free and open-source, has a huge and active community of users.
- C# language is for many the most preferred architecture when it comes to backend programming in Windows environments.
- Other languages include PHP, Perl, and Ruby.
Database Management Systems
A full-stack developer writes code that is used to perform Relational mapping to fetch data from the database. Some popularly used DBMS are MySQL, SQL SERVER and PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Oracle Database. A good understanding of their workings is critical.
Version Control
Version control systems help manage the project files and keep track of the entire history of the user's things. Popular ones are Git, Github, and Subversion.
Git helps manage the project files. It keeps track of the entire history of things that the user is working on. GitHub is a web-based service for version control using Git. The user can look at other people’s code, identify issues or errors, and even propose changes.
Web Hosting Platforms
Web hosting platforms allow you to deploy your product on a cloud service provider so we can access it from the WWW. Popular ones are Amazon web services, Google cloud platform, Heroku, and Microsoft Azure.
Soft Skills
A full-stack developer needs to possess some basic soft skills as well.
- Creativity - The developer must understand the project's objectives and create a product that engages the target audience.
- Strategic planning - Planning is a critical phase in any development life-cycle. The developer should possess the aptitude to plan the design, development, and implementation phases strategically. This helps streamline the process.
- Analytical skills - As the name suggests, these skills help analyze information accurately and make logical, data-driven decisions that help in maximizing efficiency. Now, these are skills that one develops when they're exposed to it. But a good sense of understanding is required.
- Problem-solving skills are again crucial to predict any errors and develop a bug-free application. From a business perspective, problem-solving skills play a significant role in ensuring the smooth conduction of tasks.
- Time management skills - The developer must meet the deadlines while ensuring proper execution of his tasks.
Now that you are familiar with the skills, let's look at the key responsibilities.
Responsibilities of a Full Stack Developer
- Development of front-end - With the help of HTML/CSS and JavaScript frameworks and libraries, the developer must be able to build interactive user interfaces.
- Design the backend of the application - He must be able to build a robust backend architecture to fetch data from the servers.
- Creating databases and servers - These systems must be resilient to outages and must function endlessly.
- Ensuring Cross Platform compatibility - Applications must run smoothly on all operating systems like Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
- API development - Depending on the application architecture, the developer is responsible for API creation. These APIs perform crucial tasks like fetching data from the server.
- Meet all technical and consumer requirements - The developer must be able to build responsive applications that meet customer requirements and keep them engaged.
Salary of a Full Stack Developer
According to PayScale, the average salary of a full stack developer in the US is around 75k USD.
In India, the average salary of a full stack developer is around 6 Lakhs INR.
Next Steps
We hope that this article on ‘Who is a full stack developer’ helped you. If you are looking to get advanced practical learning of full stack technologies and perhaps make a career out of it, certification will come in handy.
Simplilearn's Full Stack Java Developer Masters Program gives you an in-depth understanding of full-stack development. This course on Full Stack Java Development is packaged to give you a comprehensive and collective understanding of front-end, middleware, and back-end Java web developer technologies. Through this program, you will learn to build an application end-to-end, test and deploy code, store data using MongoDB, and much more.
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