Web TechnologiesCourse and practice

Back ends

What happens on a company's servers when someone uses its site or its app, and how that part is built. This skill trains you to follow a request through a back end, to tell languages, frameworks and databases apart, to judge where a back end should run and what it will cost as use grows, and to ask the right questions before a stack is chosen for you.

Slides
  1. Inside a back endEvery request to a back end goes through the same layers: a route that receives it, rules that decide, a database that remembers, and an answer, which is often data sent through an API.
  2. Languages and frameworksBack ends are written in a handful of languages, with frameworks that do the work every back end needs; all-in-one frameworks include far more than minimal ones, and any mainstream choice can do the job.
  3. DatabasesA database keeps data correct when many people use it at once; tables suit data that must add up, and documents suit data whose shape varies.
  4. Where a back end runsA server of your own, a platform, serverless functions or a back end as a service: the less you manage, the less you control, and each one's bill grows differently with use.
  5. Choosing a stackA stack is chosen for the people who will keep it running, the job market, the cost over the years and the way out, and rarely for raw speed.