Backend Development Roadmap
Interested in becoming a back-end developer? Here is a definitive roadmap to help you know how to kick-start your journey with back-end development.
Backend Development Roadmap
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The internet, or simply the net, is a global system of computer networks or a collection (network) of computer networks. Meanwhile, a network is a collection of computer systems sharing resources with each other. In other words, the internet is a network of computers connected together and communicating with each other via standardized protocols.
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As a back-end developer, it is essential for you to know how the internet works and how it displays the desired data to users in a browser. The internet works on two fundamental aspects, namely packets and protocols.
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The Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of rules for routing and addressing the packets of data so that they can reach their destination by traveling over networks. We refer to the Internet Protocol as the TCP/IP protocol suite for transmitting data from the source to the destination.
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The client-side, often known as the front-end, is where the processing takes place within the web browser of the end user’s system, whereas the server-side or back-end is where the process occurs on a web server.
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The domain name is one of the most crucial elements of websites. It is the unique address of websites through which they are identifiable. Through the domain name, users can find your website’s presence on the internet easily. They do not have to leverage your website’s IP address.
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Web hosting is a service that lets individuals and businesses host or posts their websites on the internet. The special computers called servers host websites and display them in a browser as and when requested by users.
Now, you might be thinking, why should I learn front-end technologies to become a back-end developer? Though you don’t need to master all front-end technologies, you should have a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These three are the core technologies of the internet.
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HTML is a short form for HyperText Markup Language. It is the standard language for creating the structure of websites. In general, HTML is a language for creating documents that are to be displayed in web browsers.
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CSS is an abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a style sheet language that defines how the HTML elements on a web page should be presented or displayed. Simply, it is a language that defines rules to style the front end of websites.
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JavaScript is a front-end scripting language that provides dynamic behavior to web pages. In other words, it helps to create dynamically updating content. It lets you incorporate complex features on your website.
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A front-end framework is a software application that is a collection of pre-coded packages and modules that facilitate the creation of the front end of websites. It handles all low-level functionality involved in the development of the front end without requiring the developers to code for that purpose.
The operating system is the primary software program for managing and allocating a computer system’s resources to other programs. These resources include the central processing unit (CPU), memory, network connection, input-output (I/O) devices, and file storage.
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Linux commands are instructions to computer systems to perform specific tasks. Though there are various GUIs available for Linux, the command-line interface still outperforms in some situations. So, as a backend developer, you must be familiar with the basic Linux commands and how to execute them.
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As a backend developer, working with the terminal is a common practice. There are numerous terminal commands and utilities that make a variety of development tasks easy and quick. Some typical terminal commands you should learn are ssh, head, less, find, grep, sed, awk, kill, and tail.
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A thread is the smallest unit of the processing carried out in an operating system. Alternatively, it is a path of execution within a process or simply a lightweight process.
When multiple threads get executed at the same time, it is referred to as concurrency. The threads running in concurrency can communicate with each other and share resources. Such sharing of resources may sometimes result in deadlocks and resource scarcity.
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Networking or computer networking refers to interconnected computing devices, such as laptops, desktops, servers, smartphones, servers, etc., where they share information and resources. These devices follow a set of rules called protocols to communicate with each other through wireless or physical connections.
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Memory management is the process of dividing the memory among different processes running on the system. It is an effective method to manage various operations between the main memory and disk during the process execution.
App installation is the process of downloading a specific application from the web and installing and configuring it to use on the system.
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IDE is an abbreviation for Integrated Development Environment. It is a software program that consolidates all the essential developer tools under a single graphical user interface (GUI). A typical IDE at least consists of a source code editor, debugger, and compiler or interpreter.
A code editor is simply a software program to write and edit source code. It provides various features that help developers write code faster. These features include syntax highlighting, code refactoring, auto-completion, etc.
Once you develop basic knowledge of the internet, front-end technologies, and operating systems, now it’s time to choose the programming language for backend development and learn the language and its corresponding tools.
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Python is an object-oriented scripting language developed by Guido Van Rossum in 1991. It is an interpreted, strongly-typed, and dynamically typed language. The design philosophy of Python emphasizes code readability by eliminating the use of delimiters, like semicolons, curly braces, etc. Instead, it leverages indentation.
A galore of Python frameworks are available out there for web development. Among all, Django is the most popular one, followed by Flask.
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JavaScript is a scripting language used for both the front end and back end of websites. A plethora of JavaScript backend frameworks is out there. Some of the most popular ones are Express.js, Next.js, Meteor.js, and Gatsby. Make sure to have familiarity with these frameworks.
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Java is a server-side, object-oriented programming language developed by James Goslings. With Java Server Pages (JSP), it is possible to create web applications using Java. Besides, you should be able to work with popular Java frameworks available for web development, such as Spring, Struts, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), and many others.
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HyperText Preprocessor is the full form of PHP. It is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Designed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, it is used for creating every kind of website, from a simple blog website to an eCommerce website.
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Ruby is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language having an emphasis on simplicity and productivity. It is an interpreted language that blends Perl, Lisp, Ada, and Smalltalk. For backend development, Ruby on Rails is the widely used Ruby framework. This framework comes with full-stack web development features.
Version control or source control is a way of tracking changes made to the source code over time. Various version control systems are out there that help the development team track the changes made to all the files of the project as they capture the snapshot of every change.
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Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system that makes it easy to track and manage changes made to any set of files and allows team members to work collaboratively to write the source code of a single project. With Git, you can handle every size of the project, from small to large.
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GitHub is the internet hosting provider for a version control system called Git and software development. Along with Git’s VSC, it also offers bug tracking, task management, software feature requests, access control, and continuous integration.
A database is the heart of any back-end development. It is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. It stores information in such a way that it becomes easy to fetch, manage, and update it quickly and efficiently.
Types of databases:
- Relational databases
- Object-Oriented databases
- Distributed databases
- NoSQL databases
- Graph databases
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SQL is an acronym for Structured Query Language. It is the standard query language for manipulating data stored in relational database management systems. It is specially designed to handle structured data. In addition, it's the de-facto query language for all relational database management systems, including MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, and MariaDB.
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NoSQL is not only SQL, which are databases that store and manage data in a format other than the tabular one. These databases are more efficient than relational or SQL databases. Based on the data model, NoSQL databases come in different varieties.
Types of NoSQL databases:
- Document databases
- Key-Value databases
- Wide-Column databases
- Graph databases
Application Programming Interface is the full form of API. It acts as a bridge or mediator between two software programs and facilitates communication between them. In other terms, an API is a set of definitions and protocols leveraged for developing and integrating software applications.
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JSON is an acronym for JavaScript Object Notation. It is an encoding scheme that eliminates the need for writing ad-hoc code for every software application to exchange information with servers. The JSON API module uncovers the implementation for data stores and data structures, such as bundles, fields, and entity types.
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API authentication is the process of validating the identity of a client that is trying to establish a connection between the client and the server through an authentication protocol. The protocol is in charge of sending the credentials from the client requesting to establish the connection with the remote web server in plain text or an encrypted format.
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The full form of SOAP is the Simple Object Access Protocol. It is a messaging protocol for exchanging structured information between systems and applications. It relies on the application layer protocol, and its message format is based on the XML Information Set. Moreover, SOAP involves processes running on different platforms to authenticate, authorize, and communicate with each other through XML.
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An API framework is a set of code libraries and modules that offer basic functionalities you require while developing your own application programming interfaces (APIs).
In computing, caching is a process of storing frequently accessed data in local memory for a limited period of time. Whenever a user requests that particular data, they retrieve it from the local memory rather than from a database. The primary advantage of caching is it helps users retrieve data faster and significantly improves the performance of applications.
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CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It is a service with the primary intent to offer high availability and improved performance of websites. This means that CDN ensures the faster delivery of website content and assets to users through a geographically closer endpoint to the user request.
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Server-side caching is the practice of storing web files and data on the original server for reuse.
When a user initially requests a web page, the website follows the standard procedure for getting data from the server and creating the web page itself. The server replicates the webpage and keeps it as a cache after the request is made, and the response is returned.
The next time when the user revisits the website, it loads the cached copy or already saved web page, which makes the process faster.
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Client-side caching is the practice of storing a copy of a web page in the browser’s memory rather than the server’s cache memory. Generally, the browser memory is located on the user’s system. As a result, whenever the user visits a web page enabled with client-side caching, the browser maintains the copy of that web page.
With a rising rate of cyberattacks, it becomes essential to protect web applications against potential threats. To do so, you must have basic knowledge of web security. Web Security is the practice of implementing protective measures to protect web applications from cyber threats.
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Encryption is one of the most common techniques to ensure data security. It is the process of converting plain or human-readable text into ciphertext. This ciphertext is only accessible to authorized people who leverage the appropriate cryptographic key to decrypt it.
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Secure Hash Algorithm is a full form of SHA. It is a family of cryptographic hash functions, which include SHA 0, SHA 1, SHA 2, and SHA 3, created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
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SQL injection or SQLi is one of the most typical kinds of web security vulnerability. It lets threat imposters manipulate queries that a web application makes to a database. With this, they are able to retrieve data from the database, which is normally not available to anyone.
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Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a kind of cyber kind that tricks the user of a website into performing certain unwanted actions on web applications in which they are authenticated.
A key to developing high-performance and defect-free web applications is testing. Testing ensures that the web applications you develop meet the end user's or client’s requirements and are free from potential defects.
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Integration testing is a type of software testing that combines individually tested components of an application together and tests them as a group. The primary purpose of integration testing is to verify the interaction between components.
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Unit testing is a kind of software testing that validates individual components called units of applications for their correctness. It is low-level testing, which ensures that every component of the application is functional and operates as intended.
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Functional testing is a broad category of software testing that ensures the application has met all the functional requirements. It is a black box testing technique where testers are not aware of the application’s source code. They simply provide a set of inputs to the application and compare the actual results with the expected ones.
After learning all the major concepts, now it is time to put them into practice by developing small and simple projects. When you work on creating your own projects, many concepts you learned will be more clear to you as you will be implementing them actually. Go with simple and small projects and later move on to creating complex projects.
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Joining the developer community will be very beneficial for you as a beginner because the experts from the community can help you with your projects. Also, you can learn trending topics and cutting-edge technologies that may help you in taking your career to the next level.
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A user authentication system is a software application that requires additional input beyond the user’s username and password to ensure the identity they claim. It ensures high security of data by preventing unauthorized users from accessing the information systems.
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CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM system helps businesses manage all their relationships and interactions with customers. Its primary goal is to improve business relationships, streamline business processes, and stay in connection with customers.
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Content Management System is the full form of CMS. It is a platform that lets individuals create, modify, and manage website content quickly and efficiently without any technical knowledge. Also, it lets professionals from non-technical backgrounds create robust websites without writing a single line of code.
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A web crawler, often referred to as spider or spider bot, is an internet bot that browsers the World Wide Web (WWW). Search engineers operate this internet bot for the purpose of web indexing. Many web search engines and websites leverage web crawling software to update their web content.
Besides the aforementioned core concepts and back-end technologies, some other concepts that you should learn and master to become a back-end developer are as follows:
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Virtualization is a technology that entails the simulation of physical hardware, such as CPU cores, memory, disk, etc., and represents it as an individual machine. It has its own OS, processes, kernel, and drivers.
Containerization is a technology that entails simulating only the OS of the system and not the entire physical system. Here, multiple applications can share the same OS kernel.
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A specified place that may be used to store and arrange data is called a data structure. Additionally, an algorithm is a series of procedures used to solve certain problems. We can create computer programs that are effective and optimized by learning data structures and algorithms.
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Web sockets are described as two-way communications between servers and clients, i.e., simultaneous communication and data exchange between both sides. From the ground up, this protocol defines a full duplex connection. Web sockets make strides in giving web browsers access to powerful desktop features.
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A web server is both hardware and software that leverages HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) or its secure variant, HTTPS, to respond to the client’s requests made over the Word Wide Web (WWW).
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CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Continuous Deployment. It is a method of delivering applications to end users or clients frequently by incorporating automation in the development process.
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