Let me give you a simple🚦roadmap to know where you are and where you should go next.
🔑Key Concepts
Every website has two parts. A Front-end, and a Back-end.
The frontend is the part where you see it in the browser and interact with it. All the visual aspects.
The back end is the part that powers the front end. It's behind the scenes, and it's mainly about storing data and databases and providing it to the front end.
🌐Jobs
So web development jobs fall into three categories.
- 👨💻The Front-end development
- 🛟Back-end development
- 🚢and Full-stack development (involves both front-end and back-end development)
👷♂️What exactly does a backend developer do?
Backend developers are responsible for constructing the foundational systems that drive the functionality of applications users engage with.
This includes various tasks such as designing the architecture, implementing, and maintaining these critical systems.
Their responsibilities typically involve working with:
- 💾 Databases, such as MySQL,
- ✂️ Frameworks, like Laravel or Ruby on Rails, and
- 🧨 APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
Their expertise ensures that the backend infrastructure operates seamlessly, enabling smooth interactions between the user interface and the underlying data and processes.
Here is the core responsibility of a backend developer, if you don't know:
| Task | Description |
|---|---|
| Understanding performance needs and goals | Forming an understanding of the performance requirements and objectives of the website |
| Development and management of APIs | Creating and managing APIs for the website |
| Developing systems for data storage and processing | Building systems to securely store and handle data required for processes like payment processing |
| Writing, testing, and maintaining code | Writing code, testing, and developing solutions for coding issues, including maintenance tasks |
| Designing site architecture | Designing site architecture using established methodologies like Agile Scrum and frameworks |
| Organizing system logic | Structuring system logic effectively |
| Providing solutions to system problems | Offering solutions to address system-related issues and challenges |
🥷 Skills to Become a Backend Developer in Six Months
Becoming a proficient backend developer requires mastering various skills and technologies within a relatively short timeframe.
Below, I outline a comprehensive roadmap to help you achieve this goal in six months:
Month 1: 🦴Foundations of Backend Development
- Week 1: Understand the role and responsibilities of a back-end developer. Familiarize yourself with databases, frameworks, and APIs.
- Week 2-3: Join a comprehensive course on databases. Learn about SQL and relational databases like MySQL. Practice creating and managing databases.
- Week 4: Learn about server-side programming languages. Start with PHP or Python. Learn basic syntax, control structures, and data types.
Month 2: 🍖Advanced Backend Concepts
- Week 1-2: Deepen your understanding of databases. Explore NoSQL databases like MongoDB. Learn about data modeling and optimization.
- Week 3-4: Master server-side programming languages. Dig deeper into PHP or Python. Learn about functions, classes, and object-oriented programming.
- Last 2 days: Get hands-on projects with frameworks. Choose a popular framework like Laravel for PHP or Django for Python. Build simple applications to understand model-view-controller (MVC) architecture.
Month 3: 🌦️API Development and Integration
- Week 1-2: Learn about APIs and their importance in backend development. Explore RESTful API design principles.
-
Week 3: Start building your own APIs. Use tools like
Postmanto test and debug API endpoints. Learn about authentication and security. - Week 4: Focus on API integration. Learn how to consume APIs in web and mobile applications. Practice integrating third-party APIs into your projects.
Month 4: 🛸Troubleshooting and Optimization
- Week 1-2: Master troubleshooting techniques. Learn how to diagnose and debug backend applications effectively.
- Week 3: Jump into performance optimization. Learn about caching, load balancing, and database indexing.
- Week 4: Learn monitoring and analytics tools. Use tools like New Relic or Datadog to monitor application performance. Learn how to generate and analyze performance metrics.
Month 5: 🌥️Cloud Infrastructure and Deployment
- Week 1: Understand cloud computing concepts. Learn about popular cloud providers like AWS or Azure.
- Week 2-4: Take a course on cloud services for backend development. Learn about serverless computing, containerization, and microservices.
- Rest days: Practice deploying applications to the cloud. Learn about CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment strategies.
Month 6: 🏗️Advanced Topics and Projects
- Week 1-2: In the last month, learn more advanced backend topics. Choose topics like message queues, event-driven architecture, and real-time communication.
- Week 3: Work on a capstone project. Choose a challenging project that integrates various backend technologies and concepts.
- Week 4: Finally, reflect on your learning journey. Review your projects and identify areas for improvement. Prepare for job interviews by practicing coding challenges.
⛏️Back-end development: Tools and software
Here's a breakdown of the tools and software commonly used in back-end development:
1. 📇Database Frameworks:
- MySQL: A relational database management system used for storing and retrieving data. It's widely used for web applications and offers scalability and reliability.
- MongoDB: A NoSQL database program that uses JSON-like documents with schema flexibility. It's suitable for applications with rapidly changing data models or unstructured data.
2. 🛝Web Servers:
- Apache HTTP Server 2: An open-source web server software that delivers web content across the internet. It's known for its stability, security, and flexibility, making it a popular choice for hosting websites and web applications.
3. 🔐Security Protocols:
- SSL/TLS Certificates: These are cryptographic protocols that provide secure communication over a computer network. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and its successor TLS (Transport Layer Security) encrypt data between the server and client, ensuring confidentiality and integrity in online connections.
4. 💫 Version Control System:
- Next on your journey, become familiar with version control systems. These systems help track project history and enable collaborative work with others.
- 🔌 Git:
- Git is the most widely used version control system, employed by over 70% of software development teams. It's a must-know tool, and allocating around two weeks for learning Git is advisable.
Back-end developers usually utilize these tools and software to build robust, scalable, and secure web applications that handle data storage, server hosting, and encryption of online communications.
If you seek more knowledge regarding backend development, consider taking a look at this in-depth backend development roadmap.
✅Recommendation: Use Notion to boost productivity
Notion is a fantastic tool for developers! It supports syntax highlighting for over 60 programming languages. If your day-to-day involves reading coding docs, watching programming tutorials and tracking progress, taking notes, and writing content, Notion can make you more efficient.
Notion AI has the capacity to generate code, equations, graphs, and even explanations for code snippets. It is the smartest AI assistant that helps you think bigger, work faster, and augment your creativity, right inside the functional notion workspace you're already familiar with.
It is available as an add-on to Notion plans, including Free Plans, for $10 per member, per month. This gives you access to all AI features in Notion. A 20% discount is available to all workspaces on any plan with annual billing.
👏Conclusion
By following this timeline and dedicating consistent effort to learning, you can acquire valuable backend development skills within 6 months and be well-prepared to land a job in backend development.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article.
If you're curious about becoming a frontend developer in six months, you can read this article as well. 👇
The Roadmap to Become a Frontend Developer in 6 Months
If you EVER wondered about the future of frontend development, you can also take a look at this article.
Stay tuned for more valuable content, and if you find it helpful, you may also like my YouTube Channel.
🤳My Social: X
Top comments (57)
good stuff. i would recommend looking at nginx, though, either instead of or as well as apache. also, building some understanding of swagger/openapi. even if you use a framework that builds docs for you, understanding how to hand write/edit them can be very useful.
Great suggestion. THANKS.
Seems like a scam or stealing.
good article, I don't want to be disrespectful or anything but 6 months is unrealistic for backend development especially for a beginner that has never touched code. If you have previous experience and you know the fundamentals of programming etc. 6 months would be a realistic goal. It's coming up to a year now for me and i have done so much i have background in frontend, backend. I have made dozens of API's. I've made my own website agency where i sell templates and offer full design and development services i have integrated PayPal and AWS in my website and it was made with react, MongoDB, Nodejs, Express. my point is all I've had is interviews but not got the job and I've got a year experience and i done all that off my own back and not copying from Youtube and so on pure research and hard grafting and its been mental torture lol. now i currently doing a computer science degree hoping it would give me more of a chance to get my dream job. Also sorry about the rant HAHA
Its certainly true that becoming a backend developer in 6 months is hard for beginners who never touched code. But everything is possible under hard work and consistency. if they're dedicated and commit 2-4 hours every single day learning to code, its become easy. nothing comes easy first. finally, getting a job is highly dependent on your interview preparations and communication skills I believe. There are lots of programmer out there who had outstanding skillsets but not good at communication, thus didn't land a job... yet.
If you said becoming a frontend developer in 6 months that is possible for like you said hard work and consistency and dedicated to commit up to 2-4 hours every single day learning to code, Cause they could learn html CSS and fundamental's of JavaScript under 6 months like i did and i never touched code in my life until last year took me month to learn html and about month and half with CSS cause i didn't understand the positioning and layout. and JavaScript took me abit longer due to for loops and i didn't understand that you literally have to be so specific with every line of code else it will just throw an error lol. I strongly disagree with backend developer in 6 months but that's my opinion other than that i enjoyed reading your article anyway.
It depends on the individual's learning phase or how much effort they put in, I believe. Anyway thank you so much for sharing your own experience.
Yes I have really struggled to learn anything from following through examples about API restAPI sql etc yet have plodded along fairly well with front end stuff. I really need backend knowhow however or will build clunky things that need hosting I cannot be sure is the correct host. This is now happening as I introduce js into my work but find it slows the css and html down. Many many months of practice and interest and passion and skills already are mine.
If your struggling backend development let me know and i will try to assist you in anyway. if you want me to make a tutorial on how to do something i will make one on here for you to get you up and running and il explain and annotate the code so it's easier to understand for you're future backend projects.
Check out my new article to setting up mongoDB and cloning a API template Repository.
dev.to/shawn2208/tutorial-on-makin...
Good reading, thank you so much :)
Glad it helped!!
Lots of scammers are commenting on this article. Please don't click any of these garbage links.
Great article, you give a very clear map on how to become a great backend developer, thanks
You're welcome. Glad it helped you!
It was an awesome post !! Helped me check what areas I need to focus on next as a backend developer. One thing I personally believe is the git and version control system should be the first in the roadmap as it can help track our projects we do during learning of other concepts :)
Thanks for your feedback. I think learning Git first can be confusing for beginners, especially if they are unfamiliar with programming languages or building projects. Once they've learned creating a single piece of work that performs specific functions, it's time to learn git and start committing their works to git repositories.
Such an interesting read. Some people may think 6 months is not enough to achieve this, but if one is committed and focused, its very achievable.
I totally agree with you. 6 months is a BIG time. Of course, if you're CONSISTENT and practice EVERY single day.
Thanks for sharing
you're welcome.
Cool, informative and well structured article!
Glad to hear that.
Good read
Thanks
Very good post... thanks for your time !
You're welcome.
Thank you so much I am currently learning PHP and I find this very helpful
You're welcome.
I'm sure AI will be more reasonable with timelines in a roadmap than this!
It mentions basic ways to become a professional backend developer.
As a senior backend developer, I recommend this roadmap to beginner developers to follow.
And thanks for your wonderful blog.
You're welcome, and Thanks for your recommendation. I agree that its a perfect roadmap for beginners.
I wholeheartedly agree
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.