8 ms·

Free resources for learning full-stack web development

237 points by moipersoin 10y ago

partycoder 10y ago
Being a full stack developer means being proficient on the frontend as well as backend. Unfortunately none of those tutorials prepare you to work at the backend of a production service. To say you can do backend code because you can write in JavaScript is like saying you can write a paper on cardiology because you know English. Knowing the language is a small part of the job. There is a lot of domain knowledge that is required in addition to the language. Learn networking, learn operating systems, learn distributed systems, learn performance and scalability, learn about databases. Then learn node.
- majormajor 10y ago
  Before really going deep into networking, OSes, distributed systems, perf and scalability, I'd say "learn monitoring, alerting, and dashboards, and then learn whatever your data indicates as issues." Do that right and you'll have a much directed path towards what to learn next.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    Logging, monitoring, etc... is of no value if you do not have an intuition of what to monitor. Monitoring is mostly reactive, to stay afloat you should focus on prevention: know your code, keep it clean, test it, do load testing... and monitor it.
    - kaspm 10y ago
      All of these answers are too simplistic. There's no single answer in what to learn to become a software engineer. If you have no development background, learning javascript, node, react is a way to start down the path then build your skills as you progress. Personally, I recommend learning domain modeling and understanding entity relationships, primary and foreign keys then SQL. Great foundation for engineers at most companies.
      - partycoder 10y ago
        That is good enough if you are going to be supervised by a senior developer that can mentor you, but is still not enough to be an autonomous developer.
- partycoder 10y ago
  And as a small example: Let's take a look at the "best practices" tutorial from nodeschool.io, one of the recommended tutorials. https://github.com/excellalabs/js-best-practices-workshopper/blob/master/src/decomposed/balanceManager.js https://github.com/excellalabs/js-best-practices-workshopper... Can you list all the mistakes in this code? - Using IEEE 754 floating point numbers (built-in Number type in JavaScript) for storing a balance is unsafe. Read more here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-double-or-float-to-represent-currency http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-doubl... - Your bank would never represent a balance in that way. They store transactions individually and they fold them to compute your balance. - The input validation is extremely weak. Pass in: undefined, NaN, Infinity or some funny value and you will end up with a corrupted balance, or force "decreaseBalance" to increase, and "increaseBalance" to decrease.. The isValidAmount method should use "isFinite" rather than strong comparison with null. And let's better stop here...
  - Schaulustiger 10y ago
    To be honest, I don't think that NodeSchool intends to give a primer on how to build a production-ready balance manager. They want to teach the basics of JS, that's all. I agree, though, that those learning services give the impression that it's just about learning how to code and maybe use some design patterns. You won't find a security/authentication course on FreeCodeCamp or one about codebase maintainability, which is a shame.
  - JDLongley 10y ago
    This is great to show how smart you are, but what will a beginner who wants to use this resource think when they read your comment? People have to start somewhere.
    - partycoder 10y ago
      My point is to provide another perspective on what is the real entry barrier to backend programming. Many people underestimate backend programming, and underestimate technologies only because they make use of a some scripting language like JavaScript, Ruby or Python. I have seen millions of dollars wasted and jobs lost because of the harmful idea that backend development is for everyone and that anyone can do it after some simple training. Production-strength backend development has become more productive because of better tooling, but not any easier. It still requires plenty of domain knowledge, discipline, rigor and attention to detail. A functional prototype for a small startup might not strictly require a lot of rigor, but load test it or throw some millions of daily active users at it, or get a pen tester to see if it's secure enough or just advertise it and start receiving malicious users to see if holds up.
- mkalygin 10y ago
  I agree. I'm mostly experienced in front-end and I like to work on back-end as well, but I can say that I feel a lack of practice on back-end side since I don't know everything you have mentioned. What do you think is the best way to learn production best practices for back-end?
  - partycoder 10y ago
    First is to learn the difference between functional requirements and non-functional requirements. Usually functional requirements are explicit, and non-functional requirements are implicit. e.g: nobody asks for a service that doesn't crash, degrade or gets hacked. Those are implicit requirements. Each one of those requirements comes with their own set of good practices. e.g: security good practices, maintainability good practices, configuration good practices, documentation good practices, etc... Then, you don't protect a $10 bike with a $100 lock. There are tradeoffs that need to be taken into account.
- nimchimpsky 10y ago
  > Then learn node. or don't bother, because its javascript.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what do you suggest instead?
    - vinceguidry 10y ago
      I personally recommend Rails. Still the best, after all these years.
      - wapz 10y ago
        I've talked to several back-end engineers recently and none of them recommended Rails because of the 'magic.' They have recommended Node w/express (most popular) followed by Django and for me personally (small project) they recommended Laravel.
        vinceguidry 10y ago
        I don't want to get too deep into apologism here, but that's a common complaint by back-end guys who don't like the front-end. Rails is the solution for the solo developer or small team, the "magic" really helps in these scenarios. If your project is big enough to require the skills of an experienced back-end guy, then you're so far past the learning stage that you might as well be in your rocking chair screaming at the neighbor kids.
        wapz 10y ago
        Oh don't worry I'm not trying to defend the positions of those I talked to. I started learning Laravel for a small project I'm doing (I wrote some native iOS and Android apps and want to make a web interface for users to get their data). Do you recommend rails for that? I know close to no web (just basic html/css/javascript).
- mawburn 10y ago
  At the same time, it's hard for people to learn about those things in any real way without some understanding of how to put it into practice.
- mawburn 10y ago
  At the same time, it's hard for people to learn about those things in any real way without some understanding of how to put it into practice.
siddharthgdas 10y ago
Thank you so much
ConAntonakos 10y ago
Unrelated, but is there a good list for machine learning?
- mkalygin 10y ago
  Here is the good guide to deep learning: http://yerevann.com/a-guide-to-deep-learning/ http://yerevann.com/a-guide-to-deep-learning/
- fizixer 10y ago
  FWIW, a "super harsh" guide to (learning) ML [1] was posted on reddit a few days ago. [1] https://redd.it/5z8110 https://redd.it/5z8110
- j_s 10y ago
  I will spam you with my uncurated collection I've hoarded for just from the past few months here on HN: CS 20SI: Tensorflow for Deep Learning Research http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs20si/syllabus.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs20si/syllabus.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781067 A visual introduction to probability and statistics http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/ http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13735714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13735714 Mathematicians becoming data scientists: Should you? How to? https://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/mathematicians-becoming-data-scientists-should-you-how-to/ https://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/mathematician... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739687 good beginner tutorials for Stan or probabilistic programming in general http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic-Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers/ http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic-Programming-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742102 Supporting the AI Talent Pipeline https://medium.com/@mark_riedl/supporting-the-ai-talent-pipeline-5ae0fc67a4f6 https://medium.com/@mark_riedl/supporting-the-ai-talent-pipe... Georgia Tech Offers Online Master of Science in Analytics Degree for Under $10K https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382263 Practical Deep Learning For Coders http://course.fast.ai/ http://course.fast.ai/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13599074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13599074 (learn or be a dinosaur) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605222 ($1k machine) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13588070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13588070 (oxford deep nlp) Coding The Matrix: Linear Algebra Through Computer Science Applications http://codingthematrix.com/ http://codingthematrix.com/
debaserab2 10y ago
This barely touched on what you need to become a competent front end developer and the aesthetic competency you need to have to make something look nice. This is the thing I most often see as completely stopping backend engineers from becoming "full stack". Full stack != learning react.
- whalesalad 10y ago
  So true. Full stack is understanding the layers of a modern web stack like basic webserver/port binding knowledge, basic unix skills, http, DNS, rest, serving apis, consuming apis, using queues for background jobs, database schema, avoiding n+1 queries, authentication mechanisms for browsers and clients, email (dkim+spf), serving assets, handling browser caching issues, the list goes on... an SPA with react is really just touching the surface.
  - jaredsohn 10y ago
    That's not what the GP said; the GP was arguing from the other direction saying that to be considered full stack you need to understand design, too.
  - jshmrsn 10y ago
    I hadn't heard the term "n+1 queries" before, thanks for mentioning it. That's something I deal with often, but didn't know it had a specific name. https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/n_plus_one/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/n_pl...
- lcw 10y ago
  I don't think aesthetics play very much if any role in being a effective front end developer. Look at Craigslist the thing is terribly ugly and dated but still widely used and functional. The aesthetics look like someone with no taste in design or modern UX wrote it. If someone writes the next CraigsList by your definition are they not a successful front end developer? Sure having a taste for design is nice but hardly necessary to be successful at the craft.
lacampbell 10y ago
Shameless request for advice - what's the simplest way of deploying stuff to a VPS? I want to somehow set up an identical environment on my dev machine, and on a VPS in another continent (too much latency to edit files on directly). Ideally I'd then be able to deploy from a dev environment identical to my production environment. I tried docker but debugging the containers did my head in. I was thinking of trying VM images with vagrant, but I'd love to know if there is a simpler solution to this. I'm just one person doing it in their spare time.
- haikuginger 10y ago
  I really like Ansible. It provides a declarative framework for defining "roles" a server might have, and requires a minimal toolkit to get started- no images to deploy; just define the state the server should be in at the end of the playbook.
- closed 10y ago
  If docker didn't work for you, because it didn't feel enough like having a virtual machine you can tinker with, then vagrant might be a good choice.
- ing33k 10y ago
  simple solution is just using shell scripts. if you are looking for a product who's primary goal is to create identical machine images check out Packer https://www.packer.io/intro https://www.packer.io/intro
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  One solution is to set up a droplet which serves a website from /home/deploy/web/site/ on the server. Then to deploy: rsync -Pa ./site/ deploy@your-domain.com:/home/deploy/web/site/ Note: The trailing slashes are important. I use nodemon to watch /home/deploy/web/site/ for changes, which restarts the server. There are tools like nodemon for whatever stack you're using (rails, etc).
- ldonley 10y ago
  Maybe I am biased, but I agree with the other user on here that Ansible is a good solution for keeping the environments the same. However, if you're feeling brave, you should definitely check out OpenShift (community version at http://openshift.org http://openshift.org). OpenShift is basically Kubernetes with a bunch of cool stuff added, one especially useful feature is source-to-image. It pulls your code from a scm repo and finds a builder image (or you can choose one) and it will build the docker image for you. You can have it pull whenever there is new code and rebuild the image and deploy if you want. On top of that you get lots of cool docker orchestration features.
59nadir 10y ago
"How you can create your frontend and a mediocre backend all in one language, because you're lazy or looking to cash in on the web!"
- onion2k 10y ago
  "Those people have worked out an easy way to make money without working very hard! The fools!"
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
sly010 10y ago
Looks more like "my-stack web development".
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

237 points by moipersoin 10y ago

Being a full stack developer means being proficient on the frontend as well as backend. Unfortunately none of those tutorials prepare you to work at the backend of a production service. To say you can do backend code because you can write in JavaScript is like saying you can write a paper on cardiology because you know English. Knowing the language is a small part of the job. There is a lot of domain knowledge that is required in addition to the language. Learn networking, learn operating systems, learn distributed systems, learn performance and scalability, learn about databases. Then learn node.

majormajor 10y ago
Before really going deep into networking, OSes, distributed systems, perf and scalability, I'd say "learn monitoring, alerting, and dashboards, and then learn whatever your data indicates as issues." Do that right and you'll have a much directed path towards what to learn next.
- partycoder 10y ago
  Logging, monitoring, etc... is of no value if you do not have an intuition of what to monitor. Monitoring is mostly reactive, to stay afloat you should focus on prevention: know your code, keep it clean, test it, do load testing... and monitor it.
  - kaspm 10y ago
    All of these answers are too simplistic. There's no single answer in what to learn to become a software engineer. If you have no development background, learning javascript, node, react is a way to start down the path then build your skills as you progress. Personally, I recommend learning domain modeling and understanding entity relationships, primary and foreign keys then SQL. Great foundation for engineers at most companies.
    - partycoder 10y ago
      That is good enough if you are going to be supervised by a senior developer that can mentor you, but is still not enough to be an autonomous developer.
partycoder 10y ago
And as a small example: Let's take a look at the "best practices" tutorial from nodeschool.io, one of the recommended tutorials. https://github.com/excellalabs/js-best-practices-workshopper/blob/master/src/decomposed/balanceManager.js https://github.com/excellalabs/js-best-practices-workshopper... Can you list all the mistakes in this code? - Using IEEE 754 floating point numbers (built-in Number type in JavaScript) for storing a balance is unsafe. Read more here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-double-or-float-to-represent-currency http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-doubl... - Your bank would never represent a balance in that way. They store transactions individually and they fold them to compute your balance. - The input validation is extremely weak. Pass in: undefined, NaN, Infinity or some funny value and you will end up with a corrupted balance, or force "decreaseBalance" to increase, and "increaseBalance" to decrease.. The isValidAmount method should use "isFinite" rather than strong comparison with null. And let's better stop here...
- Schaulustiger 10y ago
  To be honest, I don't think that NodeSchool intends to give a primer on how to build a production-ready balance manager. They want to teach the basics of JS, that's all. I agree, though, that those learning services give the impression that it's just about learning how to code and maybe use some design patterns. You won't find a security/authentication course on FreeCodeCamp or one about codebase maintainability, which is a shame.
- JDLongley 10y ago
  This is great to show how smart you are, but what will a beginner who wants to use this resource think when they read your comment? People have to start somewhere.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    My point is to provide another perspective on what is the real entry barrier to backend programming. Many people underestimate backend programming, and underestimate technologies only because they make use of a some scripting language like JavaScript, Ruby or Python. I have seen millions of dollars wasted and jobs lost because of the harmful idea that backend development is for everyone and that anyone can do it after some simple training. Production-strength backend development has become more productive because of better tooling, but not any easier. It still requires plenty of domain knowledge, discipline, rigor and attention to detail. A functional prototype for a small startup might not strictly require a lot of rigor, but load test it or throw some millions of daily active users at it, or get a pen tester to see if it's secure enough or just advertise it and start receiving malicious users to see if holds up.
mkalygin 10y ago
I agree. I'm mostly experienced in front-end and I like to work on back-end as well, but I can say that I feel a lack of practice on back-end side since I don't know everything you have mentioned. What do you think is the best way to learn production best practices for back-end?
- partycoder 10y ago
  First is to learn the difference between functional requirements and non-functional requirements. Usually functional requirements are explicit, and non-functional requirements are implicit. e.g: nobody asks for a service that doesn't crash, degrade or gets hacked. Those are implicit requirements. Each one of those requirements comes with their own set of good practices. e.g: security good practices, maintainability good practices, configuration good practices, documentation good practices, etc... Then, you don't protect a $10 bike with a $100 lock. There are tradeoffs that need to be taken into account.
nimchimpsky 10y ago
> Then learn node. or don't bother, because its javascript.
- partycoder 10y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what do you suggest instead?
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    I personally recommend Rails. Still the best, after all these years.
    - wapz 10y ago
      I've talked to several back-end engineers recently and none of them recommended Rails because of the 'magic.' They have recommended Node w/express (most popular) followed by Django and for me personally (small project) they recommended Laravel.
      - vinceguidry 10y ago
        I don't want to get too deep into apologism here, but that's a common complaint by back-end guys who don't like the front-end. Rails is the solution for the solo developer or small team, the "magic" really helps in these scenarios. If your project is big enough to require the skills of an experienced back-end guy, then you're so far past the learning stage that you might as well be in your rocking chair screaming at the neighbor kids.
        wapz 10y ago
        Oh don't worry I'm not trying to defend the positions of those I talked to. I started learning Laravel for a small project I'm doing (I wrote some native iOS and Android apps and want to make a web interface for users to get their data). Do you recommend rails for that? I know close to no web (just basic html/css/javascript).
mawburn 10y ago
At the same time, it's hard for people to learn about those things in any real way without some understanding of how to put it into practice.
mawburn 10y ago
At the same time, it's hard for people to learn about those things in any real way without some understanding of how to put it into practice.

siddharthgdas 10y ago

Thank you so much

ConAntonakos 10y ago

Unrelated, but is there a good list for machine learning?

mkalygin 10y ago
Here is the good guide to deep learning: http://yerevann.com/a-guide-to-deep-learning/ http://yerevann.com/a-guide-to-deep-learning/
fizixer 10y ago
FWIW, a "super harsh" guide to (learning) ML [1] was posted on reddit a few days ago. [1] https://redd.it/5z8110 https://redd.it/5z8110
j_s 10y ago
I will spam you with my uncurated collection I've hoarded for just from the past few months here on HN: CS 20SI: Tensorflow for Deep Learning Research http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs20si/syllabus.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs20si/syllabus.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781067 A visual introduction to probability and statistics http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/ http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13735714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13735714 Mathematicians becoming data scientists: Should you? How to? https://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/mathematicians-becoming-data-scientists-should-you-how-to/ https://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/mathematician... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739687 good beginner tutorials for Stan or probabilistic programming in general http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic-Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers/ http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic-Programming-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742102 Supporting the AI Talent Pipeline https://medium.com/@mark_riedl/supporting-the-ai-talent-pipeline-5ae0fc67a4f6 https://medium.com/@mark_riedl/supporting-the-ai-talent-pipe... Georgia Tech Offers Online Master of Science in Analytics Degree for Under $10K https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382263 Practical Deep Learning For Coders http://course.fast.ai/ http://course.fast.ai/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13599074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13599074 (learn or be a dinosaur) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605222 ($1k machine) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13588070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13588070 (oxford deep nlp) Coding The Matrix: Linear Algebra Through Computer Science Applications http://codingthematrix.com/ http://codingthematrix.com/

debaserab2 10y ago

This barely touched on what you need to become a competent front end developer and the aesthetic competency you need to have to make something look nice. This is the thing I most often see as completely stopping backend engineers from becoming "full stack". Full stack != learning react.

whalesalad 10y ago
So true. Full stack is understanding the layers of a modern web stack like basic webserver/port binding knowledge, basic unix skills, http, DNS, rest, serving apis, consuming apis, using queues for background jobs, database schema, avoiding n+1 queries, authentication mechanisms for browsers and clients, email (dkim+spf), serving assets, handling browser caching issues, the list goes on... an SPA with react is really just touching the surface.
- jaredsohn 10y ago
  That's not what the GP said; the GP was arguing from the other direction saying that to be considered full stack you need to understand design, too.
- jshmrsn 10y ago
  I hadn't heard the term "n+1 queries" before, thanks for mentioning it. That's something I deal with often, but didn't know it had a specific name. https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/n_plus_one/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/n_pl...
lcw 10y ago
I don't think aesthetics play very much if any role in being a effective front end developer. Look at Craigslist the thing is terribly ugly and dated but still widely used and functional. The aesthetics look like someone with no taste in design or modern UX wrote it. If someone writes the next CraigsList by your definition are they not a successful front end developer? Sure having a taste for design is nice but hardly necessary to be successful at the craft.

lacampbell 10y ago

Shameless request for advice - what's the simplest way of deploying stuff to a VPS? I want to somehow set up an identical environment on my dev machine, and on a VPS in another continent (too much latency to edit files on directly). Ideally I'd then be able to deploy from a dev environment identical to my production environment. I tried docker but debugging the containers did my head in. I was thinking of trying VM images with vagrant, but I'd love to know if there is a simpler solution to this. I'm just one person doing it in their spare time.

haikuginger 10y ago
I really like Ansible. It provides a declarative framework for defining "roles" a server might have, and requires a minimal toolkit to get started- no images to deploy; just define the state the server should be in at the end of the playbook.
closed 10y ago
If docker didn't work for you, because it didn't feel enough like having a virtual machine you can tinker with, then vagrant might be a good choice.
ing33k 10y ago
simple solution is just using shell scripts. if you are looking for a product who's primary goal is to create identical machine images check out Packer https://www.packer.io/intro https://www.packer.io/intro
sillysaurus3 10y ago
One solution is to set up a droplet which serves a website from /home/deploy/web/site/ on the server. Then to deploy: rsync -Pa ./site/ deploy@your-domain.com:/home/deploy/web/site/ Note: The trailing slashes are important. I use nodemon to watch /home/deploy/web/site/ for changes, which restarts the server. There are tools like nodemon for whatever stack you're using (rails, etc).
ldonley 10y ago
Maybe I am biased, but I agree with the other user on here that Ansible is a good solution for keeping the environments the same. However, if you're feeling brave, you should definitely check out OpenShift (community version at http://openshift.org http://openshift.org). OpenShift is basically Kubernetes with a bunch of cool stuff added, one especially useful feature is source-to-image. It pulls your code from a scm repo and finds a builder image (or you can choose one) and it will build the docker image for you. You can have it pull whenever there is new code and rebuild the image and deploy if you want. On top of that you get lots of cool docker orchestration features.

59nadir 10y ago

"How you can create your frontend and a mediocre backend all in one language, because you're lazy or looking to cash in on the web!"

onion2k 10y ago
"Those people have worked out an easy way to make money without working very hard! The fools!"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

sly010 10y ago

Looks more like "my-stack web development".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]