FASTEST Way to Learn Backend Development & ACTUALLY Get a Job

so you want to be a back-end developer well you've come to the right place in this video I'm going to tell you everything you need to know to go from zero to full-time back-end developer in three to six months and along the way I'm going to share the three biggest mistakes beginners make during their backend development Journey so watch out for those thanks to frontag for sponsoring a part of this video before I tell you the exact road map to become a back-end developer I need to tell you we're back in development fits in the overall software engineering journey in any product there's a stack which just means the list of Technologies from top to bottom that you need to create that product we have the front end a middle message passing API layer the back end and a database in plain terms the front end is what you as a user sees the API layers how the front end and the back end communicate with each other the back end is what processes and computes everything we show on the front end and the databases where we store any information we need to make the application work it might be easier to understand all of this with an example let's say we're trying to build the YouTube homepage well the front end is what you see when you go on the homepage the thumbnails the titles The View counts and then all the other tabs like Explorer shorts and subscriptions but to load all this the front end has to hit up the back end through the API layer and say hey can you send me a list of the videos I should show on this person's home page and if you're logged in this list needs to be personalized so the back end then hits up the database where all the information about you is stored what videos you've watched in the past how long you've watched them what videos you've liked or disliked all that information the back end through some algorithm computes the final list of videos we should show you sends that back up to that same API interface to the front end the front ends displays it in a beautiful user-friendly way and then you go on your journey watching your favorite YouTube videos as a back-end developer you have to understand everything I've told you except for the front end you don't care how we show the information is it pretty what colors do we use is it centered is it on the left side or the right side you just care that you're sending the front end all the correct information and so you can think of the back end as powering an entire application it's often where some of the most interesting and complex problems live to do this successfully you have to understand the API layer the back end and the database and don't worry I'm going to teach you everything you need to know to learn practice and improve in these skills let's start top down with the API layer an API or application programming interface is simply a contract between two parties the front end and the back end essentially outlining what things the front end can ask of the back end and what things the back end can provide to the front end and the place where all this message passing of information happens is called an endpoint and it simply lives somewhere on the server it's a place the front end knows where to ask information and it's the exact same place the back end knows where to provide that information there are two popular Technologies when it comes to the API rest and graphql since rest has been around for a longer time and is I think more intuitive to understand I'd recommend you start there there are really only four operations you need to know with rest get post put and delete let's walk through an example let's say we're creating an account for our user well the get request might be the user types in their email address and the front end hits the back end and says hey does an account for this user already exist can we get that account and the back end says yes or no a post request would be the backend is basically said nope this is a unique email we've never seen this before so the front end says all right then let's go ahead and create that account so post is you creating something on the back end in the database put is whenever you want to update something so for example the person might want to change their username so the front end might make a put request to the back end with a different username and then we'll change it in the system and delete is pretty self-explanatory let's say the person wants to delete their account from our system the front end would make a delete request with that account ID and the back end would go ahead and delete it I know it sounds like a lot and if you think you've understood everything then you're making the first big mistake that beginners make which is they try to understand Theory not application there is so much more out there about rest that you don't know and I simply haven't explained and the best way to learn it is by doing by practicing by playing around with public endpoints or writing your own and seeing what happens a great tool that can help you understand rest is called Postman a completely free application that allows you to design edit and iterate over your own apis and best of all you don't need a front end so you don't have to wait to build your own front-end react app just to test if some endpoint is returning hello world you can go to postman hit that endpoint and see what the response gives you and we'll use Postman to test our own back-end server eventually but for now since we haven't actually set up anything in the back end you should go ahead and play around with some public apis there are plenty of examples in the postman docs and I'll walk through some of them over here act like a detective throw random things in the endpoint use a different request parameters ask for different things try to change different things and see how their server responds read the error codes 200 means all is good 404 means not found you can find a full list of HTTP error requests on the Mozilla developer Network page and it all comes full circle because if you've ever tried to access some part of a website that doesn't exist you usually get a broken page or link or a 404 not found and 404 is the same HTTP code we just went over pretty cool right now that you've played around with some public endpoints it's time to create your own back-end server and write your own endpoints and then we can use Postman to test everything but to write our own backend server we first have to pick a programming language and a framework and if you followed Along on my channel you know exactly what I'm going to recommend either python or JavaScript are great options to get started with back-end development they're easy to learn they have great Frameworks and a robust Community to support you so if you ever query something on stack Overflow because you're stuck or have a bug there are going to be thousands of responses to help you instantly and many of you ask me what a framework is and why we should use them why not just write plain python or vanilla JavaScript well a framework just makes your life easier it's a full-fledged ecosystem that takes care of a lot of those use cases that everyone needs like a testing framework a way to connect to the database maybe even authentication and user management stuff that you don't want to worry about or is just so hard that someone's already figured out you should spend time working on the stuff that actually matters all the cool stuff you're are building in your application rather than Googling how to set up the dbe and model layer or how to set up a testing Suite A lot of this stuff will come for free in that framework and you can just use it out of the box one of the hardest things to build and maintain is account creation and user management and this is also the thing that all apps need I mean think about the last time you went to a website and didn't have to log in well this is where front deck comes in they have a bunch of Plug and Play Solutions which allow you to leverage your own user management system in minutes and best of all everything is customizable you want to support a simple login box check how about single sign-on and multiple Factor authentication also check and social login passwordless login and advanced security methods check check and check from a login box UI and admin portal you can allow your users to create new accounts on your app and have an internal system for you to monitor user Management in your system so if a user hits you up for support with any account related request you can easily help them out and truly developer first frontag is a language and framework agnostic so you can use it with any technology on the front end and the back end the documentation is also amazing and they have example code Snippets for many popular languages from node and Ruby to Python and finally when you work with user data you have to be very careful with privacy and compliance if you're in Europe you might be familiar with the stringent gdpr policies why worry about all that the experts at frontag have you covered use their simple apis and focus on the rest of your app the stuff that actually matters try out frontag today for free at fronttech.com now let's continue talking about back-end Frameworks for python I'd highly recommend either Django or flask and for JavaScript you can't go wrong with node or Express but if you want my personal opinion you need to pick one to get started go with JavaScript pick node and express and if you want more reasons why check out my best programming language to learn in 2022 where I pick python versus JavaScript in detail and well one of them wins the great thing with node and express is that you can get started in under five minutes you simply create a new folder download npm npm in it download Express and you're good to go now that we've covered all of that instead of me teaching you how to write back-end code and interface with apis and make database queries I'm going to point you to some of my favorite resources that can explain all these Concepts far better than I can if you watch my fastest way to learn coding and actually get a job video then you must be familiar with Dr Angela Chu well today's recommendation is another one of her courses titled the complete 2022 web development bootcamp I put a link in the description below so check it out if you're interested couple things to note here the course is titled the complete web development bootcamp which means it's going to teach you the entire stack of things from the front end the middle passing and the back end it'll make you a full stack engineer and there's nothing wrong with that in fact I think it's a superpower to be a generalist to understand how everything fits together but if you're watching this video chances are you're more interested in the back end side of things so what I would do is skip to the back end section do all those modules and then if you're ever interested in learning the front end you can always come because if you own the course you'll have it for life but this is also the second major mistake most beginners make when learning back-end development they learn verbatim they go through the modules and learn the concepts as they specifically tie to the examples presented in the course but once you take them away from the course and tell them to do anything else they're lost the goal by the end of the course in this video is to go and create your own back-end application from scratch and the only way to do this is by not memorizing examples it's by taking a step back and really understanding the concepts mentioned in the course essentially use the course as a guide not as a crunch the goal is to become independent and it goes without saying the course might be 70 hours long but it's going to take you far longer to truly become confident but that's okay we have three to six months remember learning doesn't happen overnight last but not least let's talk about the database layer there are two main technologies that come to mind relational databases and non-relational databases in Industry we use relational databases far more often and some popular examples are MySQL and postgres but usually for beginners non-relational databases are easier to understand since they're essentially hash Maps just key value pairs bottom line both types of databases are important if you want to become a back-end developer in Industry so I'd recommend spending a little bit of time with each lucky for you answer this course that I recommend covers both an in-depth detail now you should have all the tools you need to become a world-class back-end developer you know how to interface with apis you know how to write back-end code you know everything there is to know about the database any front-end developer or company would be lucky to have you as their partner in crime in full stack development take a moment to see how far you've come but even cooler see how customizable the back end is you should be able to easily switch out rest for graphql or your node Express server for a Django or flask one or your postgres database for a mongodb one it's really Plug and Play now all that's left is getting a job and you might think you need to memorize everything I've just told you to pass the interviews but that's actually the third and final mistake that beginners make when learning back-end development the interview prep incorrectly they think by the end of the interview they have to have a full-fledged node Express server with a postgres connection but that's simply not true in fact you'll soon realize that interviews are generally the same no matter what software engineering role you're applying for they revolve around data instructors and algorithms so go watch my fastest way to learn coding and actually get a job or how I'd learn coding if I could start over videos or I cover interview prep and detail just skip to the final few sections and you should be good to go in summary brush up on data structures and algorithms and then spend plenty of time practicing questions on lead code start with a couple easy spend most of your time on mediums and then tackle a couple hearts for entry level back-end software engineering jobs that's all you need but if you're looking to make a switch or you have a couple years of experience you're also going to go through system design interviews which are basically testing you on how to architect full-fledged systems remember the YouTube homepage example from before well the interviewer might actually ask you that or to design Twitter or Facebook or Whatsapp or whatever they want to see you think through API schemas and database design and architect an entire back-end system I'll create a more detailed guide on system design prep in a future video but there are so many free tutorials and blogs out there so go check them out and like everything else the best way to get better is just by doing by thinking in the real world what are some of your favorite apps what websites do you spend time on how are they created if you were an engineer on that company what would you do differently now you know everything it takes to become a full-fledged back-end developer in three to six months I can't say the journey will be easy but I can promise it will be fulfilling and if you've got this far then you might be shocked at how far you've come I'm proud of you congratulations that's all I have until next time cheers

Channel: Namanh Kapur

Views: 88,952

Keywords: how to learn coding, how to become a software engineer, how to learn programming, how to learn coding fast, how to become a software developer, how to get software engineer job, how to get software developer job, how to learn to code, coding, programming, software engineer, programmer, software developer, coder, faang, google, microsoft, power couple, job, namanh kapur, backend web development, how to become a backend developer, backend developer, how to learn coding for beginners

Id: _770O2pzlkg

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022