My Back-end Adventures - Intro

TL;DR: This series is about my journey into the world of Back-end Development. Every milestone, small accomplishment, frustration and major achievement is going to be documented in this series. I'll include a few tutorial articles to run through set ups that I found challenging to understand so that others after me can have an easier time. Enjoy! ๐Ÿ˜„


Just until recently (at the time of publishing this article), I decided to dive into the world of Back end Web Development. I already had a lot of experience on the front end and a deep understanding of Angular. But I wanted to change my Web Development focus slightly as well as my career.

There were a lot of choices laid out in front of me such as:

  • Python Flask
  • Node.js/Express
  • Golang
  • PHP
  • Elixir (This one is pretty cool!)

Eventually I settled on Node.js/Express since I was already familiar with JavaScript and already had done one or two really small Express projects on my own. Plus I really like JavaScript modern syntax.

The #100DaysOfCode challenge seemed like a really good way to get me going. I've always had problems with motivation and keeping the discipline to stick with a habit so it was a good fit.

I laid out a bunch of topics to cover and projects along the way so that I don't get stuck in tutorial hell. Here are some of those topics:

  • Beginner
    • Node.js Express basics
    • Routing
    • MiddleWare
    • View/Templating Engines
    • SQL ORM (Sequelize)
    • NoSQL ORM (Mongoose)
  • Intermediate
    • Security, Passwords and OAuth
    • Caching
    • State Management
    • More Database management
  • Advanced
    • Node.js Core Modules
    • Web Sockets
    • NginX

There are probably some more that I missed but I'll get to them along the way. So far I've only covered some of the basics but I learned so much that I'm excited to keep going. Can't wait to see what else I learn!