You might have heard about full-stack training courses, with various technology stacks.
But like many other beginners, you are not exactly sure what is the underlying fundamental concept behind it. I get many questions from beginners about it, so in this article I try to explain full-stack and particularly back-end specialization for web application development.
We should understand what back-end specialization is without referring to any specific tech stack or a particular language.
Every website or web application that you see or use has two parts, namely, client and server. The client part is what the users, like you and me, interact with. The client part is the user interface of a web application (the forms, buttons etc. on a page) or the pages of a website.
If we take the example of Gmail, then the Login page is one example of the user interface of Gmail application. The user enters the username and password (the credentials for their Gmail account) and clicks the "Sign In" button to start the login process. This part constitutes the client functionality.
Behind the Login page functionality of Gmail app, there is a computer program written to implement the logic of matching your username and password with the credentials you entered while registering with Gmail. That program logic controls whether you are allowed to log in or not depending upon the correctness of credentials. This Login functionality and other functions such as "Compose Mail" after login, all such logic are written as computer programs implemented on the server-side computer.
The server-side is also called the "backend" and similarly the client side user interface is also called the "frontend". The "frontend" and "backend" working together provides the complete functionality of a web application for the end user. Thus "frontend" and "backend" technologies together constitute "full-stack".
In backend development, the basic concepts are similar across different tech stacks and languages. The differences exist only in syntax and in some advanced techniques.
To become a good backend developer one should have a good hold on the basics of programming, a basic understanding of client-server architecture, networking and authentication concepts in web applications.
There are a lot of backend developer jobs in the market today, the only constraint
for hiring companies is the availability of programmers with the correct understanding
of concepts and good programming ability.
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