How to Become a Back end Developer in 2022

 One of the most rewarding yet scariest positions that developers choose to go into is back-end development. As a full-stack developer, back-end development does seem a little bit scary. The classic stereotype amongst devs is that front-end developers will either look like a hipster or some super aesthetic genius, while that back-end developer is stuck looking at a green screen and black terminal in the closet. I will not confirm nor deny this. Being a backend developer is one of the most critical roles in the entire tech stack. With all that said, let’s get into how to become a back-end developer in 2022. This was my roadmap, but I took inspiration from the roadmap. sh.

What is Backend Development

  If you want to know how to become a back-end developer in 2022, you must first know what is backend development. Backend development, to put it succinctly, is database programming and management. Whether you’re developing a mobile or web-based application, you must have programmers who can work with your Object Relationship Manager(ORM) that will tie your client-side and server-side frameworks together. It is a practice of creating those plugs into the data, oftentimes called an Application Program Interface (API). There is so much to learn about, how to become a front-end developer in 2022.

What is server

  As an example, let’s say that we’re on Amazon, and we do some shopping, and Now we’re ready to make an order. When I click place to order what happens? We’re going to start from the ground up. Any computer that’s connected to the internet, including your computer and my computer, can send a message across the internet to another computer, that’s also connected to the internet, So to simplify this, amazon has a computer in their office building somewhere, and our computer is going to send a message containing our order to that Amazon computer. In this scenario, the computer that is sending the message is called the client, and the computer that is receiving the message is called the server.

Roadmap to Becoming a Backend Developer in 2022

As a beginner, focus on these steps to progress your career in backend web development.

1. General purpose Programming Language

Now if how to become a back-end developer in 2022, you have to get comfortable with at least one programming language of some sort. A lot of people will do one tutorial in a language and bail halfway through and start a new one. This is your sign to pick a programming language and stick with it. No matter which one you choose you’ll be more productive sticking through with it than changing. You won’t be wrong if you choose any of the following:

• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• PHP
• C#
• Rust

I would highly recommend reading a book related to the programming language that you choose. This will help you understand the basics of how to program and what it takes to become a programmer. And to truly soak this all in push yourself to not constantly do tutorials. Tutorials are great for a quick reference, but constantly watching tutorials over and over again, hinders your ability to be a practical death.

For example: when a mother bird pushes their child out of the nest she expects them to fly. That’s what I’m doing to you fly my little programmer, is this scientifically accurate.

One of my favorite resources for new developers is projects by Quran on Github. It gives you ideas as a beginner programmer to work on to improve your skills. Work through a small number of projects until you start to get the idea. Don’t forget all programmers use google and the ones that say they don’t are liars.

Once you understand, how programming languages work you are ready for the next step.

2. Internet & Linux OS

The next step on this roadmap is learning Linux and how the internet works. Why Linux well it runs on about 96 of all servers around the world. So, I would say it’s a safe bet of course choosing what distribution of Linux is something you have to think of as well. My recommendation If you’re new is to stick with Ubuntu as it’s the most popular and versatile for people just getting their feet wet. The important part of this step is getting comfortable with the command line. The bad news is that learning the command line is a lifelong journey, but the good news is that you’ll look like a total badass. When learning Linux, you’ll need to learn about how the OS works with all of its subdirectories. Input and output management, threads, terminal commands, and a lot more.

One of my best and favorite books on this subject is Linux for beginners by Jason Cannon. It’s good for teaching you the basics and beyond. Depending on what kind of software you want to run on your servers you’ll need to learn those as well something like NGINX or APACHE for web servers, which circles back to the internet. Understanding the different protocols that are made to communicate between a server and a client is very important. It is necessary to learn these ethics:

• HTTP
• IP addresses
• Domains
• Other basic internet protocols

3. Databases

The word database is such a broad term used to express a store of data. You’ve probably heard your boss tell you to examine their exquisite database. Before you can think about how to become a back-end developer in 2022 you need to understand the database system. Databases are no joke, some backend developers in 2022 specializing only in the database, that’s how critical it is to organizations. There are currently two most common types of databases in the industry. They are

Relational databases

• POSTGRESQL
• MYSQL
• MARIADB
• ORACLE

NoSQL databases

• Firebase
• Cassandra
• MongoDB

If I were you I would only learn one and that would be relational databases. Because, relational databases include POSTGRESQL, MYSQL, MARIADB, and ORACLE. What makes a database a database over just pouring your heart and soul into excel is the relationship.

Think of it like this, If I had a pet store I want to record every customer and their pets with an excel file. I would have to create a column called pet1, pet2, etc. So, when Stacy the crazy cat lady comes in with their 30 cats, you can see how this doesn’t work at all at scale. Databases use a language called SQL to help you query from database tables. So, you can capture all the customers at your pet store and all of their pets in one single query without cluttering anything.

SQL is another language you should learn NoSQL doesn’t use SQL get it NoSQL. NoSQL databases use a key, or value store instead of a column, or row type. You don’t get the relationships, but if your application requires high performance and unstructured data, this honestly might just be a great solution for you. Databases are a massive concept trust me it’s pretty dense, but choose a database and learn SQL you should be good. The best place to learn is postgresql.org, it gives great insight into SQL and the features that PostgreSQL has.

4. Language-Specific Frameworks

Now when you’re at this stage, you’ll know a lot about the server’s programming language and databases. So, to simplify a lot of this for you learn a language-specific framework. Do your research, on what you think you’ll be more comfortable with, but you’ll most likely find each language has two categories of web frameworks. They are

• Batteries included
• Non-batteries included

Batteries included

 It included will include many ways to streamline the development process by managing the HTTP request objects Migration of databases, querying the database, using a simpler language caching, and much more. Now you’re probably wondering why I didn’t recommend this after the programming language. When you’re using a high-level web framework it’s great for that developer efficiency. But you might have to go under the hood sometimes, so it’s important to have that knowledge. These batteries include frameworks would be things like as:

• Django
• Laravel
• Rails
• Meteor.

Non-batteries included

 It included frameworks, strips, and all this away and just gives you the bare minimum usually just the request-response web server functionalities. If you want more control of what packages you want to have in your project or just have a more slim application. You really can’t go wrong with either type of framework similar to what I said in the programming section just stick with it. I would highly recommend these types of frameworks these including frameworks like as:

• Express
• Flask
• Sinatra.

5. APIs

 Rest APIs are a very important way for you to have clients communicate with your server. If you are building a web and mobile application you wouldn’t want to develop two separate interfaces to talk to your server. Therefore Rest APIs are a great way for you to code an interface for all of your clients. There are many ways to implement a Rest API. The most common one you’ll see in applications now is using JSON. Restful APIs mixed with HTTPS are a very reliable way for you to integrate authentication into your app. Using things like JWTs, OAuth, or another form of token authentication.

APIs also introduces another problem amongst cross-platform development, serializing data across separate platforms. The good news is that there are a lot of packages that will help you with this. One of the popular packages is an add-on to the DJANGO framework called the DJANGO REST framework. Most frameworks come with some sort of built-in or heavily supported package, that can easily turn your code into REST frameworks with minor configuration. You should learn, what’s the easiest way to develop a REST API with your current application or programming language. Some Popular APIs are:

• SOAP
• XML-RPC
• JSON-RPC
• REST

6. Containers and Virtualization

 Docker packages an application and all of its dependencies in a virtual machine that can run on any machine. So, let’s say You have a Node.JS application that requires EXPRESS and a MongoDB, rather it will have this complicated setup. You install the MongoDB client on your system and run a certain version of Node. You can have it isolated in a virtual machine that will always work the same as always.

  Dockers are one of that software you will only know its value when you shoot yourself in the foot by not using it. It’s important to learn Docker at a later stage of your development journey because when you start developing with Docker, it expects knowledge of all the applications you use. Since you’ve already learned Linux previously, you’ll already know how to expose ports us the command line and much more. If you decide to go into something with a container-like infrastructure. Eventually, you’ll want to learn how to deploy those containers with an orchestration service like Kubernetes, but that’s up to you at a later stage.

7. Cloud Services

 It is a very complex topic not because the concepts are hard necessarily, but because the amount of services they provide is just.  A lot of people try and jump into AWS thinking that this is where the money is, but it’s important to learn the step last. Because most of these cloud services are there to convenience you at a later stage.

 Think of it like this, all the stages I mentioned previously have a huge amount of roadblocks like scaling your database, provisioning your server, launching docker containers, deploying an API, and more. Cloud providers provide their value by offering these services.

Think about how much it would cost to build a server, server racks, and all the codes a building to put all this in having this in multiple regions. Cloud providers innovate by doing this hard work for you and then just charge you for the usage of the machines. Think of it like renting a server, when you’re at the stage, you should investigate architectural patterns that your application will need to run your operation. There are lots of different options like monolithic apps, serverless, or microservices. I can’t emphasize enough why you should learn this step last.

As a backend developer in 2022, your needs will be different from mine so companies like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google cloud will provide solutions and different things for your needs. That being said you’ll still need to know how they work through their documentation, when it comes to a provider they don’t differ at all. Some offer more generous free tiers than others. The best resources to learn all this is usually from the source itself. The most popular cloud services are:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Microsoft Azure.
• Google Cloud

8. Microservices

  For our Amazon example, let’s say that our backend contains code that saves an order to the database, charges the user’s credit card, and sends an email confirmation.

 In the real world, this back-end can be millions of lines of code, so we split this up into three code bases. Then each of these code bases will have its backend, each with the load balancer and sometimes its database. Then when we need to send an email, our orders backend will send a request to the email backend, which will send the email.

 So splitting up our backend into separate backends like this is called microservices, and it helps keep our code base smaller and more focused. Each microservices does not have to use the same programming language and database. One microservice can be using Javascript and MongoDB, while another microservice can be using Python and MySQL.

9. Additional Technologies

Previously, we mentioned the databases MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. These are sometimes called primary databases because they’re the main database that our website uses. Generally, we start our backend with a server and a primary database and then bring in these additional technologies if we need to. If we allow our users to upload images, a primary database is not good for storing images, so we should use a blob store like AWS S3, and CDN like cloud front to store and load user-uploaded images. If we want to allow text search primary databases are very slow at text search, so we would bring in a search database like elastic search.

 Our website is getting a lot of traffic and we need to take some stress off our primary database, we would add a cache like Redis to improve performance. If we want to do data science, we don’t want to do the data analysis using our primary database, it’s busy running our website. So we would copy all of our data into an analytical database like a snowflake, which is good for doing data science on the side.

If you want to schedule a task for later, for example, Amazon might want to email their users before their amazon prime subscription renews, we would use a job queue like rabbitMQ to schedule this task for the future. And there are a bunch more technologies like these out there that are made to solve specific problems.

Backend Developer Average Salary in the USA

Salary for entry-level vs senior engineers can very more than double, especially in countries like the United States, where the cost of living can be higher than the rest of the world and there aren’t enough programmers available. According to 2022, calculation by ziprecruiter.com, there’s nearly a $100,000 difference between the low-end and high-end salaries in the US. Either way, backend software developer salary is something that varies greatly based on experience, and you should estimate accordingly when contemplating your next hire.

Responsibilities of a Backend Developer in 2022

• Develop an understanding of the website’s performance requirements and goals to build effective successful solutions.
• Development and management of Application Programming Interfaces (API)
• Development of systems for websites to accept and securely store data such as those required for payment processing systems.
• Writing code and testing development solutions for core-related issues
• Storing data, and ensuring it’s only presented to users who are supposed to have access to it.

  Other responsibilities also include the development of site architecture using proper methodologies like agile, and scrum framework and also providing solutions to system problems.

Methods of Studying – How to Become a Back-end Developer in 2022

• You first need to know about HTTP, Protocol, and the internet. You mainly need to know how the internet backend works
• Then you have to be strong in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Read either Python or PHP programming language for speeding up the development time.
• After reading the Express framework.
• Read the easiest database of MongoDB.
• You know GIT for a version control system.
• Read the Google Cloud (GCD) for cloud service.

Conclusion

  Back-end development is such a huge field, because of all the problems that come up from the solutions we create, Implementing, search, test, cache, version control, and eventually develop. The number of things to learn as a how to become a back-end developer in 2022 is overwhelming. There is one thing you can take away from this road map is to figure out what position you’re in right now and figure out your next step of action. When you learn, how to become a back-end developer in 2022, you’ll have to understand that you’re going to make something crappy at first and fail so hard. 2022 is already a crazy year, and laws have changed, but that’s the incredible thing about technology things just change so fast.