What is Full Stack Development?

If you are trying to get a website developed, you might come across the word “Full Stack Web Development” or “Full Stack Web Developer”. From web design and development companies to freelance web designers on sites like Fiver and Upwork, everyone uses these two terminologies to describe their skill set.

But What Exactly Does Full Stack Mean?

Full-stack actually means the front end and backend design of websites and a person or a company that says it offers full-stack services, effectively implies that it can develop websites fully and knows all about the work required in getting this task done.

Full Stack Web Developer

Developing client and server software is what a full-stack web developer actually does. This person has mastery over both, HTML & CSS, allowing it to provide clients with all-around services for building websites with everything included.

A full-stack developer can also perform the following activities:

• Browser-based programming (Includes knowledge and utilization of Angular, jQuery and Vue etc.
• Server-based programming (Includes knowledge and utilization of languages like PHP, Node or even Python)
• Database-based programming (Includes knowledge and utilization or MongoDB or SQL among others.

What’s Included in Full Stack Web Development Services?

As mentioned earlier as well, full-stack web development services include both front-end and back-end website development in a complete client-based offering.

But as a customer or a business, you should know what kind of front-end and back-end skills should the developer have to be considered a full stack developer.

Most entities that mention they are offering full-stack web development services do not often come forth or be transparent on what kind of front and back end services they offer.

As a client, you should know about them so that you can enquire about them in detail with the developers you interact with for such tasks.

Here is the list of full stack front end and back end components:

Front End Full Stack Components (Also Referred to As Client Software)

• ES5
• HTML DOM
• JSON
• XML
• jQuery
• Angular
• React
• HTML
• CSS
• Bootstrap
• Redux
• Storybook
• CSS
• JavaScript
• js
• js
• GraphQL
• js
• Grunt
• Gulp

Back End Full Stack Components (Also Referred to As Server Software)

• ASP
• C#
• Java
• PHP
• C++
• Python
• js
• js
• Ruby
• GO
• com
• PaaS (Azure & AWS)
• SQL
• Less
• REST
• MongoDB
• Sass
• co

What is a Development Stack?

Any set of technologies and tools including languages, IDEs, libraries used in the process of application development is known as a development stack. This can also include servers, OS, database, front and back end components.

While full-stack developers can use any combination of such tools and frameworks to build applications and websites, most follow popular stacks and utilize them.

Here are some popular web development and application development stacks:

• Ruby on Rails
• LAMP Stack
• Django Stack
• LEMP Stack
• Mean Stack
• The Serverless Stack
• MERN Stack
• MEVN Stack
• Flutter For Web

What are the Advantages of a Full Stack Web Developer?

Hiring a full stack web developer will help you assign the whole project to just a single person or entity, but there are other, more important advantages here that you need to know:

They know and understand all the tools, technologies, and techniques required to pull off a development based assignment or project with a high amount of ease

They are the best kind of professionals to contact if you want to get an MVP or a prototype developed in a short amount of time

Consultation on ongoing projects or QA can be done through them

Working with full-stack development services providers is relatively cheaper than hiring specialized resources for each different task in a web development project.

They are nuanced in their approach and can help you gain a better perspective on your project by helping you understand newer technologies for web development.

What Are The Disadvantages of a Full Stack Web Developer?

Full-stack development services can be offered by both, individuals and companies, however, individuals that do offer such a service bring with them a lot of risk and issues.

A company or entity specializing in full-stack development services obviously has different specialized resources for each task in a web development project. They are just offering you full-stack web development solutions under one roof to allow you to get your work done in an easier, faster, and cheaper manner.

On the other hand, individual full-stack web developers are complex, and working with them brings a lot of risks. For e.g. you cannot often legally implicate them if they abandon the project midway or show incompetency in one or more of the development tasks assigned to them. Firms have better professional skills and since they have a true corporate presence, they are much more aligned to not face such issues.

Individual full-stack developers that are reliable and knowledgeable, are quite rare since raking up all skills required in full-stack web development is a hard, complex, and long undertaking.

Should You Opt For Full Stack Web Development Services?

If you are looking to get a website build, you will want quality without compromising on your timeline or budget and all of these three requirements can be met through full-stack web development services.

But, before you go on to assign a project, always research beforehand on the capabilities of the entity you plan to work with and review the kind of projects they have done in the past. This will help you understand whether the entity is suitable enough for you to hire a full-stack web developer for your project or not.

Sunaina Kakreja