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General Discussion

Lee Preslan
Lee Preslan
79 Points
Posted by Lee Preslan
Lee Preslan
79 Points

Backend Web Development and Full Stack

I really dislike html and css. I dont care for that kind of work to be honest. I really want to be well rounded as a Full Stack dev but focus on Backend. Anyone have any thoughts on what I should do/learn/attack?

2 Answers

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points
Brendan Whiting
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points

I think being a well rounded full stack dev is a perfectly reasonable goal. What is it about HTML and CSS that you don't like? When I was starting out, there are some parts of HTML and CSS that I found very tedious and frustrating. A few bits of advice:

  • Use a modern text editor or IDE (Atom, VSCode, Webstorm, Sublime Text). You can get intellisense/code completion for css rules and html attributes. You can install plugins like emmet that let you generate html snippets very quickly.
  • Learn how to use the Chrome dev tools to inspect and debug your CSS and HTML
  • Use flexbox (I haven't had to deal with css float headaches in a while)
  • CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, Material Design are great tools. They give you components that look good out of the box (especially if you're not a designer) and take care of a lot of the labor intensive work for you.
  • JavaScript frameworks like React (or Angular, or Vue) as also good tools to be familiar with. They help deal with lot of the common problems people run into trying to manipulate the DOM, and there's a huge ecosystem of great tools. Also, a lot of jobs will want you to know one of these frameworks.
Zahscha Gonzalez
Zahscha Gonzalez
27,775 Points
Zahscha Gonzalez
Zahscha Gonzalez
27,775 Points

If you want to focus more on the back-end this is what you should know (this is not an exclusive list of course):

  • Database administration: For this focus on learning a relational database like SQL and a non-relational database like MongoDB.
  • Server side or compiled language: (Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, Node.js)
  • Either server administration or cloud administration.
  • Web API's learn how to use existing ones, learn how to write your own.

My last bit of advice is, look at different full-stack development positions; find similarities between positions and focus on those skills.