What are the Qualities of a Full Stack Web Developer?

 First of all, it is important to define what the term full stack means. It refers to the entire range of technologies that power a web application, both front-end and back-end.

Front-end technologies are those seen and experienced on the client side, while back-end technologies are those associated with the server side. A full stack web development company must know both, as well as everything in between.

What are the technologies that a full stack web developer must know?

It is imperative that a full stack web development company possesses deep knowledge of the fundamentals.

•       Networking: Not only should the full stack web development firm know what is meant by TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP / HTTPS, it must also know their inner workings.

•       Databases: In any web development project, it is likely that a database will be involved. A comprehensive understanding of databases and their architecture means that the full stack web development company will be able to make databases run faster by indexing and caching.

 

•    Server Administration: This is where experience kicks in. A good full stack web development company would know which server – it could be Apache on Linux or IIS for Windows Server – performs best for the chosen stack, which is the suite of technologies selected for the project.

 

•    Security: Because data is going to be exchanged between the client and the server, it is important to ensure that the data does not get compromised at any stage. This involves intricate knowledge of security protocols and how handshakes work.

That said, let us know what technologies actually make up a full stack.

There is the front-end, which is what users get to look and feel. A web page or website can be coded in HTML, but this is pretty basic, so there is CSS.

However, CSS might not render correctly on mobile devices, which is where half the world’s internet access happens. So you have Bootstrap to take care of this. What happens if there is a button that you would like users to click on? This is where JavaScript comes into the picture. You can make your websites and their mobile versions interactive with the help of JavaScript.

Behind the scenes, user data and preferences will need to be stored, for which we have databases. But how does the web server manage to serve or store data upon request? For this, we have back-end programming languages like Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, C# and Java. Any of these can be used to program the web server to handle data and store/retrieve them from the database.

There is just one problem – programming a web server from the ground up takes a lot of man hours. And there is actually no need to. Back-end frameworks allow you to program a server, and by extension, the web application, in a more structured way. Not only is development considerably faster, it can also be more easily understood by someone looking at the code, so in case the original programmer is no longer available, another programmer can take over.

Ruby has Rails as its framework, Python has Django and Flask, PHP is associated with CodeIgniter and also Aura, C# has the .NET development framework, and Java has Spring.

A good full stack web development company would have professionals who are proficient in all these, and also how they all work together.

What makes a good full stack web developer?

Any good full stack web developer should have the ability to see the whole picture. This is important because he/she is going to be involved in choosing the technologies that make up the stack, depending on the unique needs of the project.

He/she must love challenges all the time, because bugs are going to be aplenty. How he/she debugs the code when a hitherto unforeseen problem crops up, and moves forward defines how he/she succeeds. Depending on the nature and complexity of the problem, one could choose to work his/her way around it, or right through it, ironing out the chinks in the armor. The right mindset is essential to any web development project.

He/She must absolutely be in love with learning, because newer technologies are emerging by the day. Mastering them – or newer versions of existing technologies as and when they are released – determines how fast he/she succeeds in his/her field. For example, when it comes to Server Administration, Apache and IIS are slowly becoming passe. The new buzzword is AWS, short for Amazon Web Services.

These traits are multiplied when you have a team of full stack web development professionals at a web development company. It is important that they come together as a team on a project, and not simply a pack of lone wolf programmers. This is where knowledge of Git comes into the limelight, and also development methodologies like Agile and Waterfall. Integrating planning into practice is what DevOps is all about, and no full stack developer can call himself/herself one if he/she does not know all these.

Looking for a good full stack web developer?

If you are in the market for one, why not have several of them work simultaneously on your project? Development will be significantly faster. And you get the added advantage of multiple brilliant minds coming together to lend their expertise.

With Hello Pixels, a full stack web development company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, you have access to some of the most experienced full stack web developers in the Middle East. Hello Pixels serves multiple clients in Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates, as well as overseas. It has worked on full stack web development projects of varying sizes across industry verticals in the Asia-Pacific region, and its clients speak highly of it even today.

Hello Pixels currently has a client satisfaction rate of 98%, and strives to do even better. It has been ranked among the Top B2B Web Development Companies in the world, so you can be sure that your project will be in very good hands.