An overview of Full-Stack JavaScript

JavaScript is an amazing, established computer language. If you’re passionate about this language, you’ll love this article! I think it’s not necessary to give you a new introduction to JavaScript because if you love JavaScript, I’m sure you know about it.

JavaScript is one of the most discussed topics on the Internet. Millions of articles, tutorials, and blog posts have been written by JavaScript gurus all over the world, which are easily available on the Internet today. JavaScript is an old technology, but the concept of full-stack JavaScript is relatively new.

Let’s talk about Full-Stack JavaScript in this article!

What is Full-Stack JavaScript?

Previously, JavaScript could be run on the browser only. But now, we can run JavaScript on servers, too. So now, if you want to develop a web application, you don’t need to use a different language for server-side development. Node.js lets you use JavaScript for server-side programming.

Now we can use JavaScript for frontend development, backend development, and also using plain JavaScript, you can perform database operations in MongoDB. You don’t need to use SQL.

So JavaScript can be used to develop all aspects of an application — this is why it’s known as full-stack JavaScript.

Full-stack JavaScript also refers to the MEAN stack. M stands for MongoDB, E for Express, A for Angular, and N stands for Node.js.

Advantages of Full-Stack JavaScript

• You will enjoy your work if you’re passionate about JavaScript: If you love JavaScript so much, you will enjoy your development work because you can use JavaScript for the development of all aspects of your application. You can use it for backend development, frontend development, and also for querying the database. So isn’t it amazing that you can now enjoy writing JavaScript code for server-side programming and for database operations?
• You can save time in learning: If you’re already a JavaScript developer, you can save a lot of time learning Node.js. You can quickly grasp the Node.js concepts. Learning a new language for server-side development such as PHP will take a great amount of time if you’re not familiar with the technology. But if you already know JavaScript very well, learning Node.js will not take much time.
• Upgrade with ease: Studies have shown that it is easier for full-stack JavaScript to get up to date with the latest tool and technologies compared to its competitors, such as those who are proficient in either back-end or front-end.
• You may choose not to hire new people: If you have a team of JavaScript developers, you don’t need to hire new people for backend development. You can simply give your JavaScript developers some training and they will be able to help you with backend development, too. But if you think you should hire experienced Node.js developers, you may hire them. But my point is that you have the option not to hire new people because you can train your existing JavaScript coders so that they can do the backend job also.
• Cost-Efficient: Since hiring a front-end along with a back-end developer will consume costs since the salary will pay to both. Instead, going for a full-stack JavaScript developer will hire a low number of people as well as will be spending less on salaries. An experienced agency offering full-stack development will possess a team that is an expert at all the softwares needed to create the website.
• Great application speed: App performance is of utmost importance in business. With a slow app, you can’t make much progress in your business because nobody likes a slow app. If your app is super fast, the app users will be very satisfied with it and so they will love to use it. As a result, your business will thrive! With Node.js, you can build fast applications. Node.js uses a non-blocking I/O model and it runs single-threaded. It’s built on Chrome’s V8 engine. The V8 engine converts JavaScript code into machine language, and the machine language runs fast, very fast.
• Fast development: Like app performance, development speed is also important because if you have to spend too much time in building a product, you will lose money because time is money. So you have to make sure that the development of your application finishes quickly. If you can build apps quickly, you can sell more apps to your clients in less time, which means you’ll earn more profits as a result. And if you’re building a product for general users, you can achieve early success if you can get it ready early. Node.js speeds up your development process. You can complete your project very fast with this technology. Node Package Manager (NPM) provides a large number of modules that make your programming work easier and save you a lot of time. The modules are actually libraries and frameworks such as Express, socket.js, moment, connect, forever, MongoDB, Hapi, and so on.
• Open Sourced: Most of the JavaScript full-stack development tools are open sourced, which means it won’t cost you a dime to use it. The tools are regularly updated because of the role played by the active community that supports it.
• Huge knowledge base: Another benefit of full-stack JavaScript is that there is a huge amount of information available on the Internet. There are a great number of tutorials, blog posts, articles, videos, and infographics about JavaScript, React, Angular, MongoDB, Node.js, Express, etc. available on the web. So becoming a full-stack JavaScript developer is easy.

Disadvantages of Full-Stack JavaScript

Besides advantages, full-stack JavaScript has some disadvantages. I’ll just talk about two major disadvantages in this article.

• Not good for heavy, server-side computation: Although Node.js is an amazing technology for building high-performance, scalable applications, it’s not good for heavy, server-side computation. So if you need to perform a lot of server-side computation, it wouldn’t be a good idea to choose Node.js. Rather, you should select other server-side technologies.
• It’s difficult to use Node.js with a relational database: So if you want to work with a relational database, again Node.js wouldn’t be a good choice. If you’re interested in working with a relational database, choose other technologies such as Django and Ruby on Rails.

Keep in mind that although full-stack JavaScript has its disadvantages, the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages.

A quick summary

So we have learned the following things from this article:
1. JavaScript can be used for frontend development, backend development, and for querying MongoDB.
2. MEAN stack comprises MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js.
3. Node.js lets you build high-performance, scalable applications.
4. NPM provides you with packaged modules such as libraries, frameworks, and tools that speed up the development process.
5. Node.js is not good for heavy, server-side computation.
6. Using Node.js is not easy with a relational database.

As more people flock to the realm of JavaScript to become familiar with the most popular programming language of today, the resources to understand also grows. So, if you are someone who has been enchanted by JavaScript and its innumerable benefits, you can try out the ‘Modern JavaScript For Developers’ online course. This course will help you understand many of the concepts of JavaScript with ease and its quizzes will make sure that you are extremely accustomed to the language.

This article gave you an overview of full-stack JavaScript. I hope you enjoyed reading this post!