Essentially what’s different from a full stack web developer and another web developer is a deeper understanding on the underlying web technologies, the ability to run a complete network & hosting structure, and a broader understanding of parallel technologies.

Part 2 - The Application Stack

The Application Stack provides the server side web developer the language and interfaces to the system to build applications. It provides storage such as databases and file systems and the ability to call other API’s

There are various languages and databases that a developer can use, and this choice can depend on the underlying operating system, the needs of the application and the confidence of the programmer.

Popular choices for the server side development include PHP, Python and JSP, however it is interesting to see Node, which is based on JavaScript, being developed. Because Node uses JavaScript, it means that the language on the back end is the same as the language on the front end in the browser!

One of the most popular database choices for simple applications is MySQL, however for applications more than simple Content Management Systems a more robust database needs to be used such as PostrgreSQL or Oracle.