Full Stack Development

The picture that stops you guessing later.

• Request, response, and everything in between
  DNS, the server, the browser's build of the page. Why a new site is not visible everywhere at once.
• Front end, back end, and the line between them
  The test that matters: could a visitor see it in view-source? Then it is not a secret.
• Static versus dynamic, and why static is often right
  A great many paid, real websites are files. That is not a lesser answer.

HTML, CSS and the mobile reality of Pakistani traffic.

• HTML that describes meaning hands on
  Semantic structure, forms, and accessibility that costs nothing to get right.
• CSS layout with flexbox and grid hands on
  Building layouts that hold, instead of nudging margins until they look right.
• Mobile first, because most of your users are hands on
  Designing for a mid-range Android on a patchy connection — the actual audience.
• Performance: images, fonts and what makes a page slow hands on
  Measured, not guessed.

From language fundamentals to components.

• Modern JavaScript hands on
  Let and const, arrow functions, destructuring, modules, and async/await done properly.
• The DOM, and when you no longer need to touch it hands on
  Understanding what React is saving you from before you use React.
• React components, props and state hands on
  The mental model: state changes, the view follows.
• Hooks, effects and the dependency array hands on
  Including the infinite re-render everyone writes once.
• Fetching data, and the three states of every request hands on
  Loading, loaded, failed. A UI that only handles the middle one is unfinished.

The server side of your own application.

• Node, npm and the module ecosystem
  Including how to judge whether a package is safe to depend on.
• Express routing, middleware and structure hands on
  Laying a project out so it survives past a thousand lines.
• MongoDB and data modelling hands on
  Documents, relationships, indexes, and when a relational database would have been the better call.
• Validation on the server, always hands on
  Why client-side validation is a convenience and never a control.

The part that gets people hurt.

• Sessions, tokens and what to store where hands on
  JWTs, cookies, and the trade-offs stated plainly.
• Password handling hands on
  Hashing, salting, and why you never write your own.
• Authorisation is not authentication hands on
  Knowing who someone is versus what they may do. The bug where a user changes an id in the URL and reads someone else's record.
• The common web vulnerabilities, demonstrated hands on
  Injection, XSS, CSRF and broken access control — shown working, then fixed.

Getting it live and keeping it live.

• Git workflow in a team hands on
  Branches, pull requests, review and resolving a conflict without panic.
• Environment configuration and secrets hands on
  Config that differs between local and production, and keys that never enter git.
• Deploying to a real server hands on
  Nginx, a process manager, HTTPS and a domain.
• Logging, monitoring and the rollback hands on
  Knowing something broke before the client tells you, and being able to undo it.

Pakistan's National Vocational & Technical Training Commission publishes a course-contents document for the trades it funds. This programme is mapped to Full Stack Developer — 12 weeks, 4 hours a day, 240 contact hours.

Published by NAVTTC and reproduced here so you can check our syllabus against it. We teach it to those hours: 240 contact hours over 12 weeks, the same as the standard. Read the NAVTTC document.

Before you start

• Basic computer literacy and typing speed
  This is an intensive programme; slow typing genuinely holds students back.
• Free: Web Development Basics
  Strongly recommended before week one.

Where it leads

• Flutter / Mobile App
  Adds mobile delivery to the same skill set.
• Cyber Security
  The natural specialisation for developers who enjoyed the security module.

Roles this prepares you for

• Junior Full Stack Developer
  Building and maintaining web applications.
• Front End Developer
  Specialising in the interface and its performance.
• Web Developer (freelance)
  Client sites and applications. Requires the business skills taught in the Freelancing course.

Interested in this programme?

Try the subject free first — there is no reason to pay before you know you like it.