A Quick Guide to Becoming a Full-Stack Java Developer

In this article, we will be talking about how to become a full-stack developer very, very quickly. We will start with talking about what are the important things that you need to be focusing on to become a full-stack developer. After that, this article will show you a very, very, very simple two-step roadmap which can help you take the first steps towards becoming a full-stack developer.

Key Skills for Java Full-Stack Developers

What are the important things that you would need to learn to become a Java full-stack developer?

The first important thing, as usual, is the Java language. You need to be good at programming with Java. Once you're proficient at programming with Java, you need to be good at two very important Java-related frameworks: Spring and Spring Boot.

Now, when it comes to full-stack development, you not only build a back-end with Java, but you'll also build a front-end with something like Angular or React. Because React is the number one front-end framework today, learning it is highly recommended. So, the front-end language is JavaScript, and the recommended front-end framework is React.

Here is a summary of the essential skills: - Languages: Java and JavaScript - Frameworks: Spring, Spring Boot, and React

You need to be able to build a web application, a REST API, and a full-stack application.

Essential Tools and Deployment Knowledge

You would also need to know how to containerize these applications. These days, almost every organization out there is making use of Docker. You also need to know the build tools Maven and npm.

In addition, it's a great bonus if you would know how to deploy these to the cloud. For example, the most popular cloud platform out there today is AWS.

So, these are all the important things that you would need to know to start your journey toward becoming a full-stack developer.

A Simplified Roadmap

As you can guess, this is not an easy journey. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Often, you might be confused about where to start, how to approach things, and what different kinds of applications you have to build. This publication has been working on this problem for over six years and has simplified the entire roadmap to just two main steps. With just these two steps, you can actually learn everything that we have talked about in this article until now.

Step 1: Master Java First, focus on mastering Java. If you are new to the language, this is a great place for you to start and learn how to build things. If you already know Java, you can move to the next step.

Step 2: Master Spring, Spring Boot, and Full-Stack Deployment The next important step is to master Spring and Spring Boot. A comprehensive learning path should cover everything you would need to build a full-stack application with Spring and Spring Boot and also deploy it to the cloud. This includes not only learning Spring, Spring Boot, and React, but also Docker, Maven, Gradle, and unit testing. The goal is to build a full-stack application and deploy it to AWS, which is the most popular cloud platform out there right now.

This is arguably the fastest way for anybody to become a Java full-stack developer. While there are many other things you will need to learn on top of this, getting started very quickly is very important. That's what this two-step roadmap enables. It helps you to get started quickly. You will understand the entire landscape, and thereafter, you will see that learning new things becomes really, really easy.

So, if you would want to become a Java full-stack developer, this two-step roadmap is what is recommended.