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Posted by Stephen Viesto
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Stephen Viesto
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 4,997 Points

Suggested track order?

I'm interested in becoming a backend developer and have started with limited skills so I figured I'd start with the web design track. I'm almost done with it and now I'm wondering what a good progression of tracks would be?

Should I continue with the front end development track, the full stack development track, maybe go right to the php, ruby, or ruby rails track?

Any professionals that can tell me what a good track order would be?

Will the backend language tracks cover everything I need to know or should I be still developing skills in other tracks first?

Thanks in advance!

2 Answers

Karen Freeman-Smith
Karen Freeman-Smith
29,248 Points
Karen Freeman-Smith
Karen Freeman-Smith
29,248 Points

I've been taking courses from several tracks at the same time. From what I've seen you could pick any track you like and they will give you enough information to tackle it from scratch. I'm almost finished with the full-stack track and it gets into some back-end JavaScript in the second half. But if you like PHP or Ruby better then you should be able to jump into one of those tracks without too much problem. I don't think either front-end or full-stack would help much to begin PHP or Ruby.

Stephen Viesto
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Stephen Viesto
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 4,997 Points

I figured learning front-end (html/css/javascript) would be something that I should know if I were to move on to Ruby, PHP, or Java..

It would be helpful to know if certain tracks are recommended as prerequisite tracks or courses for other tracks and courses. For instance: I would suggest taking a basic HTML course before taking CSS courses.

Karen Freeman-Smith
Karen Freeman-Smith
29,248 Points
Karen Freeman-Smith
Karen Freeman-Smith
29,248 Points

Each course has suggested prerequisites listed. If you are following a track you will probably already have the prerequisites taken care of. The basic HTML/CSS course is the first one in a lot of the tracks, so you would have gotten some exposure to the front end stuff even if you had started with Ruby - or maybe the web class is part of the more advanced Rails track. There are several courses to learn the back-end language before you start integrating it into a web page.