The Roles and the Responsibilities for a Full Stack Developer

Introduction

When we search a job portal, all of us might have come across a lot of job opportunities for a full stack developer. Some of us know who a full stack developer is, and a few don’t have an exact idea. All of us go through a lot of applications both in our mobile phones and in our desktops daily. Each of these applications is developed by these full stack developers. A full stack developer is a person who can develop both client and server software. Full stack developers use different programming languages for developing different applications. One among such language is Java.

Java is an object-oriented programming language that runs on billions of devices. It is a high level, class-based language. The rules and syntax of Java are based on C and C++ languages. The three OOP concepts on which the Java works are: association, aggregation, and composition. The basic concept of Java is based on classes and objects, along with its attributes and methods. The programming language is platform independent. Each of the Java program runs under the java virtual machine platform. The important features of Java are as follows: object oriented, platform independent, simple, secure, architecture neutral, portable, robust, and multi-threaded. Java enables the users to write the program on one platform and run it on virtually on any other platform.

Augmented Reality and its roles in modern application era

What are the Java applications?

Java has become a robust programming language because of its features such as, object orientation, high performance, platform independence, and many more. Here we will discuss the top applications of Java.

The main applications of Java are:

1. Mobile applications
2. Desktop G U I applications
3. Web applications
4. Artificial intelligence
5. Gaming applications
6. Big data technology
7. Business applications
8. Cloud applications
9. Embedded systems
10. Scientific applications

Let’s begin!

Mobile applications

The applications developed for mobile phones and tablets are called mobile applications. Today majority of phones and smart devices have Android operating system. Java and its Oops principles, gives ease of simplicity and better security with android. So Java is considered as the official programming language for mobile app development.

Java is compatible with platforms such as Android Studio, and Kotlin. The byte code compiled by Java compiler runs on Dalvik Virtual machine (DVM), which is a specialized virtual machine for Android.

Examples of mobile applications are, Uber, Swiggy, Calendar, Google maps, Hotstar etc.

Desktop G U I applications

The applications developed for desktop are called Desktop G U I applications. Almost all desktop applications can be developed using Java. Java has the development capability to develop various applications through means like Abstract windowing toolkit (A W T), Swing, and JavaFx. A W T has several components like menu, list, button etc. Swing consist of advanced elements like scroll panes, lists, and tabbed panels. It responds to all key entries, and mouse click events. JavaFX is a graph based method to develop applications.

Web applications

Java is used to develop various web applications. This is possible with the help of servlets, struts, JSF (Java server faces), JSP (Java server pages), and web servers like Apache Tomcat, resin, Adobe JRun etc. Servlets and J S P form the server side components and help to develop the business logic of the web application. Java provides high security and easy coding, that helps in the development of applications for education, health, banking, insurance etc

Artificial Intelligence

Java can be used for A I projects. Java is mostly used to create search algorithms, genetic programming, machine learning solutions, neural networks, and multi robot systems. Java in A I programming offers the ability to code different algorithms, since A I is closely connected with algorithms. A few important features that enable Java for A I programming are: easy to learn and use, easy to code algorithms, cross platform, easy to debug, scalable, better user interaction etc.

Gaming applications

Java is one of the best platform to develop two dimensional games. Most of our Android phones have games and these games cannot be built without Java. The most powerful open source engine jMonkey is supported by Java. jMonkey has huge capacity to develop three dimensional games. Java supports the Dalvik virtual machine, and thus Android games use java as the primary language.

Big data technologies

Big data is one of the most popular terms in the latest technology. Big data can be elaborated as a extremely large and complex datasets, that are analysed and studied to extract reports, trends etc. The big data technologies such as Apache Hadoop, Apache spark, Apache mahout are sub projects of Java. Hadoop, an open source framework, associated with big data is written in Java. The powerful language Scala, used in big data technology is based on Java. Scala programs can easily run on the J V M.

Business applications

Java is widely used for businesses in the field of banking, e commerce, enterprise etc. The business applications of Java include inventory control system, communication system, reservation software, accounting software etc. The financial software used by big companies such as Barclays is Java based. E commerce giant Amazon also uses Java for its applications.

The Java applications provide a number of memory safety features, and are designed to restrict data access, that makes Java banking applications reliable.

Cloud applications

The delivery of I T resources such as storage, databases, networking, servers, via internet is called cloud computing. The distributed nature of Java makes it useful for the cloud applications. Java helps to develop applications used in Saas (software as a service), Paas (platform as a service), and Iaas (Infrastructure as a service). According to the requirements it helps the companies to develop their applications remotely or share data with others.

Embedded systems

An embedded system is a combination of a computer hardware and a software, designed for a specific purpose. We come across a lot of embedded systems in our day to day life. The e commerce, the entertainment system in our car, mobile network, etc uses embedded system. Java was originally designed for the purpose of developing embedded systems.

While using low speed processors, Java is fast and robust. SIM cards used in our mobile phones have been using a variant of Java card. Devices such as blue ray disc devices and television sets use Java.

Scientific applications

Java supports the development of various scientific applications. Java is used for scientific applications involving scientific calculations and mathematical operations. By using Java for scientific applications, we can assure same results on different platforms for calculations. The front end and back end of MATLAB is developed using Java. The scientific applications using Java are related to science, research, aeronautics, health etc.

Tools and their requirements

Some of the tools that help the full stack developers to develop various applications are:

1. Eclipse
2. NetBeans
3. Apache Spark
4. JUnit
5. Jenkins

Eclipse

Eclipse is an open source, integrated development environment, that runs in the cloud. In addition to Java, it supports other languages using plug-ins such as C, C++, Python, and Javascript. It is easy to write, compile, and debug.This can be used in cross platform.

NetBeans

NetBeans is an Integrated Development Environment that runs on almost every platform such as Linux, Windows, Solaris etc. It is used to develop Java swing application. It is an open source tool. It can be used to save and load and type of data. For Wizard framework it supports step by step dialogues.

Apache Spark

Apache spark is called a parallel processing framework that can handle both batch and real time processing workloads. It helps to speed up processing jobs in Hadoop systems. It is an open source framework. It is used for large scale applications across clustered computers. In order for the interaction with the spark core engine, it is written in Scala language. It supports languages such as Java, Python, Scala etc.

JUnit

JUnit is an open source testing framework for Java. It is used for writing and running test cases. Here codes can be written quickly and efficiently for testing purpose. It is used to create test cases. If a test passes it shows a green bar and if a test fails it shows a red bar. It gives immediate feedback for the results after the tests run.

Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source framework used for testing purposes. It is a server based system that runs Java servlet such as Apache Tomcat. It helps to find and solve the defects in the code for the developers. A wide range of plug-ins can be used in this framework. Also, this framework has integrated APIs.

Frontend techniques for developing Java applications

The front end means what the user sees and interacts with. The front end includes the Graphical user interface, the design, website layout, menus, texts, images, videos etc that the user visualizes and interacts with. The most popular languages used for the frontend are HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Front end languages

HTML refers to hypertext markup language. It is the standard markup language used to develop web pages. It is used along with technologies such as cascading style sheets (CSS), and scripting language such as Java script. HTML elements are building blocks of HTML pages. Images and interactive forms can be embedded into the rendered page, using the HTML.

All HTML documents should start with a document type declaration: <! DOCTYPE HTML>. An HTML document begins with <html> and ends with </html>. Some of the HTML elements are <h1>, <p>, <br> etc.

Cascading style sheets (CSS), allows the developer to apply styles to the web page. It describes how the HTML elements should be displayed. CSS saves a lot of work by controlling the layout of multiple web pages all at once. External style sheets are stored in CSS files. A CSS rule consist of a selector and a declaration block.

Eg: h1 {color: blue; font size: 12px}

Here the selector points to the HTML element you want to style. The declaration block consists of one or more declarations separated by semicolon. Each declaration consists of CSS property name and a value separated by a colon.

JavaScript is the programming language of the web. One of the many Java Script HTML methods is: getElementById (). JavaScript codes is inserted between <script>, and </script> tags. A JavaScript function is placed in the <body> section of an HTML page. JavaScript files have the extension .js

Front end frameworks

Angular JS is an open source front end framework used to develop single page web applications. It extends HTML with new attributes. It can be added to an HTML page with a <script> tag. Angular JS extends HTML attributes with directives and binds data to HTML with expressions. Angular JS is a JavaScript framework written in JavaScript.

React. Js is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is used to build single page applications. It is a tool for building UI components. React creates a virtual DOM in memory. In the virtual DOM it performs all the necessary manipulation, before making the changes in the browser DOM. It finds out what changes have been made and changes only what needs to be changed.

jQuery is a JavaScript library. It simplifies the JavaScript programming. jQuery takes a lot of tasks that require many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and wraps them into methods that you with a single line of code. jQuery simplifies a lot of complicated tasks from JavaScript like Ajax calls. The jQuery library contains the following features: HTML manipulation, CSS manipulation, HTML event methods, effects and animations, AJAX, and utilities.

Backend techniques for developing Java applications

The backend means the server side of the website. It is a part of the website that the user cannot see and interact. It stores and arranges the data and ensures that all the activities on the client side works fine. The functionalities developed by the backend developers are indirectly accessed by the users through frontend applications. The common backend languages are: PHP, C++, Java, and Python.

Backend languages

PHP is the server side scripting language developed for web development. It is a powerful tool for dynamic and interactive web pages. It is an acronym for: “Hypertext Preprocessor”. It is an open source scripting language. PHP files contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code. The PHP code is executed in the server and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML. PHP files have the extension “.php”.

C++ is one of the most popular programming languages. It can be used to create computer programs and is widely used for game development. C++ can be found in operating systems, graphical user interfaces, and embedded systems. C++ is portable. It can be used to develop applications that can be adapted to multiple platforms. It get started with the code #include<iostream>, which is a header file library. Header files add functionality to C++ programs.

Python is one of the most popular programming language in present world. It can be used on a server to create web applications. Python can connect to database systems. It can be used to handle big data and perform complex mathematics. It works on different platforms and has a simple syntax.

Eg: >>>print(“Hello, World!”)

Hello, World!

Back end frameworks

Some of the back end frameworks are: Express, Django, Laravel, and Spring. Express is a Nodejs framework for backend development. Django is a Python web based framework. It is used to build large and complex web applications. Laravel is a web application framework for PHP. Spring is a server side framework that provides infrastructure support for Java applications. It has extensions that help to develop applications quickly and efficiently.

Career opportunity as a full stack developer

The career option for a full stack developer is a great choice for the coming year. With the rapid advances in science and technology, the demand for the developers is on the rise. An experienced full stack developer can easily earn between 16- 20 LPA. The average salary of a mid-level employee with 5 to 9 years of experience is 12-14 LPA. The average starting salary of a fresher in India is 2.2 LPA. The companies like T C S, Infosys, Accenture, I BM etc offer great opportunities for full stack developers.

Future Scope

Nowadays, full stack development is in huge demand. Companies hire a lot of full stack developers as they can handle multiple technologies. The future of the full stack development is attractive and promising, because of the steady growth in the demand of these professionals. A full stack developer can easily handle the work of 2-3 developers because of their expertise. Because of this reason, a company can hire a single full stack developer instead of hiring 2 or 3 developers. This increases the scope of a full stack developer over a normal developer. The company can keep the team size small, and in turn cut the operating cost.

The tools and technologies keep getting updated. Since a full stack developer has to work with different technologies, they have to learn the relation between different technologies beforehand. So keeping up with new updates is easy for them.

As companies and institutions are relying on technologies and websites, the demand for such developers is rising tremendously. The future scope of the full stack developers is undoubtedly bright.

Scope @ N9 IT Solutions:

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2. It got established primarily with an aim to provide consulting and IT services in today’s dynamic environment.
3. N9 IT also offers consulting services in many emerging areas like Java/J2ee, Cloud Computing, Database Solutions, DevOps, ERP, Mobility, Big Data, Application Development, Infrastructure Managed Services, Quality Assurance and Testing.

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