Hello!
I am 25 years old. I graduated from medicine a few months ago.
My goal is being a real, good backend developer.
Previous course history:
I took an Udemy course. “The web developer bootcamp” - Colt Steele.
It was good but every topics were beginner level. And It was an outdated course. It did not teach anything about ES6 and beyond.
It was a general introduction about HTML, CSS, JS, Jquery, Node, Express, Git.
But it skipped node.js and started directly via Express. And it did not tell anything about MVC. And it taught node js wrong way. It was made in call back hell.
My goals:
- Learning a backend language deeply.
- Learning modern, good practices. MVC, clean code etc.
- Being able to develop a software from scratch.
I need a roadmap or guide. Because taking udemy courses, reading books etc. do not help. It only takes you from beginner 01 level and makes you beginner 02 level. What should I do. I need some short term and long term targets.
I can study/work 8 + hours daily.
Thank you.
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Your best bet is to just jump in the deep end and make something semi-complicated.
If you want to learn Node and Express specifically, MVC is not particularly important. I tend to adopt a similar pattern in my Node apps, but it is just a pattern, not a law. If you want much stricter MVC, Rails is a good place to start.
The learn node and have some good example projects to work on, the freeCodeCamp sections Apis And Microservices Certification and Information Security And Quality Assurance Certification are good places to start. It begins by getting you tho think about your backend as an API server that spits out JSON (which helps with most of the backend concepts without having to worry about styling or templates). Then the info sec section introduces concepts such as security, authentication and testing.
Don’t worry too much about callback hell etc yet. Build something bad and then make it good. You’ll learn more 
4 Likes
Thank you very much! I even dont know should I learn MVC for now.
I have some questions, before going with some semi-complicated express,
- Should I first learn javascript deeply? (because I dont know, async, await, promise, maps, sets etc.)
- Should I learn plain Node before doing something on Express.
Thank you!
Just start, you’ll learn JS by necessity as you go.
I’d recommend Express, since that’s how most people / tutorials go. Plain Node is a real pain since you have to do all the server stuff yourself. Express doesn’t actually do a lot, but what it does do is really useful!
2 Likes
Thank you very much! I will start with Apis And Microservices Certification.
And what do you think about online video courses and programming books? I think 95% of them are very insufficient.
I wish you the best man. Best practices, testing, architecture, conventions, patterns, and clean code will come as search for what is the purpose of a backend dev is. I am going the front-end route, I have just basics of backend, but find a resource similar to this. (this is for front-end though) Where the content is explaining what sorts of services a backend dev can be.
Good luck and happy coding!
Manning’s In Action books are generally excellent. Express in Action is definitely worth reading, it gives a very good, concise overview of the different concepts (via a series of very simple projects) and explains why do things certain ways.
O’Reilly books are normally high quality, but drier, more of a reference most of the time. The head first series is excellent though.
Pragmatic Programmers stuff is normally very good. NoStarch, same.
Packt stuff is very occasionally good, they publish quite a lot of junk though. Apress, same applies.
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Combine the two.
Get a job programming medical robots or working as a programmer for a healthcare company. Work on programs used in medicine.