Month: April 2022

(Contributed by: Linda Hartley)

In this fast-paced digital world, one must keep on learning and enhancing their skills and abreast themselves with the current trends to compete with the ever-evolving marketplace!

One of the most trending jobs in the market is of a full-stack developer. So, basically what is a full stack developer, what their job role is, and how to become a full-stack developer?

You can explore the answer to all these questions in this blog which is solely written to discover all the fuss about full-stack developers.

Let’s begin!

What is a full-stack developer?

A full-stack developer works on both the front-end and back-end of the website or app. A full-stack developer is also proficient in each subcaste of the tech stack.

Let’s get familiar with frontend and backend development.

Front-end development

Front-end development refers to the development of the design and user interface of the website. It basically focuses on the creation of an innovative and user-friendly interface that makes navigating the website easy.

Front-end developer creates simple and easy navigation, layout, space, typography, icons, font, color, images, animation, and much more. Wireframes and prototypes are created in the designing and front-end development phase to help developers create an exceptional user interface.

There are different tools and languages utilized in the front-end development that we will discuss later.

Back-end development

Back-end development focuses on the backend operations of the project which includes the coding section, database creation, server, and architecture. The backend controls the components which enable the user-facing side of the website to exist.

The backend developers work on creating APIs and integrate the front end with the backend. The backend development is quite complicated as the developer needs to look after every component and make sure it’s functional and practical.

What skills are required to become a full-stack developer?

There are different skills needed to become a full-stack developer that is listed below:

Front-end languages and framework

The first and foremost skill is to learn front-end languages and frameworks that play a vital role in website development. HTML, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), and JavaScript are the three main languages that are simple and easy to learn.

HTML is used for creating the structure, CSS for adding style, and JavaScript for creating the elements of a webpage. While frameworks are the programming tools that contain different programs, compilers, APIs, libraries, and ready-made components that speed up the development process.

The most common front-end frameworks are React Angular, JQuery, Bootstrap, Vue. js, and Svelte. All these frameworks and tools help in making an outstanding front-end of the website.

Back-end languages and framework

After the front-end completion, a full-stack developer needs to have hands-on experience in backend coding languages that helps in maintaining the back-end logic of a website. Some of the basic backend development languages include PHP, Python, Java, Node JS, etc.

These languages are the backbone of the website backend development. Now, to make applications faster and standardized, it’s essential to work with backend frameworks and tools.

Laravel, Django, Ruby on Rails, Express.js, and Flask are the most common back-end frameworks that help in building the architecture of a website. Therefore, learning these languages and frameworks is vital for every full-stack developer.

Database skills

Any software or app is incomplete without a database. The database is a way to create and maintain data of the website or app. It contains all the necessary information about the website users and the website products. Database creation is also a skill needed for any full-stack developer.

The database is the part of backend development that needs to be linked or integrated with the backend code. The most popular database for website development includes MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL.

Knowledge of these database tools will help full-stack developers to build up their website database seamlessly.

Expertise in popular stacks

A full-stack developer needs to have expertise in using popular tech stacks. A Tech stack is also referred to as a solutions stack that consists of frameworks, languages, front-end & back-end tools, a database, and applications connected through APIs. A full-stack developer must be familiar with the following stacks.

• The MEAN stack: comprises layer of MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js
• The MERN stack: comprises layer of MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js
• The Django stack: comprises layer of Django, Python, and MySQL
• The SERN stack: comprises layer of SQL, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js
• The LAMP stack: comprises layer of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP
• The Ruby on Rails stack: comprises layer of Ruby, SQLite, and Rails

Soft skills

Along with the technical skills, a full-stack developer needs to possess some soft skills as well. Some of the soft skills required for a full-stack developer include active listening, teamwork management, time management, collaboration with other team members, and mentoring other developers.

These soft skills are ideal for any full-stack developer that helps them in maintaining great communication and collaboration with their team.

Working knowledge of DevOps

DevOps is an enhanced version of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It guides developers through building and releasing updates and projects incrementally.

It will allow developers to follow an SDLC lifecycle that includes planning, coding, building, testing, release, deploying, operations, and monitoring. Therefore, a full-stack developer must be well-aware of DevOps to complete the project by following the proper lifecycle.

Why start your career as a full-stack developer?

According to the Glassdoor salary report, the national average salary for a full-stack developer is $99,274 in the United States. Full-stack development is a lucrative career that bridges the gap between frontend and backend development.

Becoming a full-stack developer will be a great experience for you as you’ll be working on every aspect of a project rather than sticking to a single part. As a full-stack developer, you’ll explore a unique approach to web development. It’s the best career for those who love to discover and learn new skills with each passing time.

Moreover, having a knee interest in learning new tools and frameworks can add great value to the overall project. It’s an ideal choice to become a full-stack developer as there are immense chances of growth and success in this field.

Final words

It’s a wrap! We are now well aware of the term full-stack developer and their roles and responsibilities. We get to know what skills are needed to become a full-stack developer and why to start a career as a full-stack developer.

With the rapid increase in the website and innovative apps, it’s now becoming crucial for developers to have expertise and skillset in both front-end and back-end development. Becoming a full-stack developer can be a great step towards a top-leading career.

The post What is Required For A Full-Stack Developer? appeared first on Hongkiat.

Automation is undoubtedly one of the most coveted skills a programmer can possess. Automation is typically used for tasks that are repetitive, boring, time-consuming, or otherwise inefficient without the use of a script.

With web automation, you can easily create a bot to perform different tasks on the web, for instance to monitor competing hotel rates across the Internet and determine the best price.

Personally, I have always found logging into my email fairly repetitive and boring, so for the sake of a simple example to get you guys started with web automation, let’s implement an automated Python script to log in with a single click to a Gmail account.

Installation and Setup

In this tutorial we are going to use the following tools:

1. Python programming language
2. Google Chrome browser
3. Selenium browser automation toolkit
4. Chrome Driver web driver for Chrome

For our program, we will be using the Python programming language, specifically version 2.7.11. It is critical that we install a fairly new version of Python 2 because it comes with PIP, which will allow us to install third-party packages and frameworks that we will need to automate our scripts.

Once installed, restart your computer for the changes to take effect. Use the command pip install selenium to add the Selenium web automation toolkit to Python. Selenium will allow us to programmatically scroll, copy text, fill forms and click buttons.

Finally download the Selenium Chrome Driver executable, which will open Google Chrome as needed to perform our automated tasks. The Chrome Driver is simply a way to open Google Chrome (which should already be installed) to access standard browser operations programmatically.

Simply download the most recent ZIP file from here, extract the chromedriver.exe executable, and place the executable in any directory. Be sure to make note of where your executable is, because we will need it once we get started.

Starting the Program

As aforementioned, we’ll be using the Selenium web automation framework in order to log in programmatically. The first order of business is to import every module we’ll be needing from the Selenium Python library which we installed ealier with PIP.

Let’s open IDLE or another code editor, create a new Python file with .py extension, and import the following modules:

 from selenium import webdriver
 from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
 from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
 from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

Next, we’ll create two strings that represent our username and password for the email account. Pay attention to capitalization, especially in your password string.

 usernameStr = 'putYourUsernameHere'
 passwordStr = 'putYourPasswordHere'

Now that we have everything set up in order to start the login process, we need to actually instruct a browser window to open Google Chrome, and navigate to Gmail’s login page.

If you haven’t done so already, make sure your Python script is saved in the same location as the chromedriver.exe executable we extracted earlier.

 browser = webdriver.Chrome()
 browser.get(('https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?'
 'service=mail&continue=https://mail.google'
 '.com/mail/#identifier'))

Finding Our Element

We’ve successfully gotten the browser to open Gmail, but now we need to find the input fields on the web page, into which we can enter our username and password.

We can do this easily using the built-in Chrome Developer Tools. We only need to right-click on the input fields, and select the “Inspect” menu.

Now it’s just a matter of using HTML id attributes to find the elements programmatically.

In the code below, we’re simply searching for the username input field by id, and filling it with the desired text. Then we’re searching for the Next button which transitions with a quick animation before prompting us for the password.

The send_keys() and click() commands do exactly as their names suggest — send_keys() simulates keypresses in the desired element, and click() simulates a mouse click.

 # fill in username and hit the next button
 username = browser.find_element_by_id('Email')
 username.send_keys(usernameStr)
 nextButton = browser.find_element_by_id('next')
 nextButton.click()

We can do the same thing for the password input field, as well as for the Sign in button. However, these two items appear on the page only after an animated transition.

That said, we need the program to wait a few seconds before resuming its search for elements. For the most part, this stage of code is no different from the previous one. We simply have to instruct the browser to wait a maximum of 10 seconds before locating the password entry.

 # wait for transition then continue to fill items
 password = WebDriverWait(browser, 10).until(
 EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, 'Passwd')))
 password.send_keys(passwordStr)
 
 signInButton = browser.find_element_by_id('signIn')
 signInButton.click()

Final Words

You’ve just finished creating a bot that visits a web page, enters your username and password, and successfully sign you in, automating the whole process to a single click. I know this was a simple demonstration, but the possibilities are endless.

On that same note, be careful of how you use this skill. Some people use bots and automated scripts to enter sweepstakes thousands of times, completely disregarding terms and conditions. Others use them for more malicious intentions.

Just be sure to use automation purposefully and carefully, because it really is a much needed skill in the programming community!

• Download Source

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