Looking for some tips/guidance on diving into Back-end
Hoping this is the right channel for this!
I'm wanting to start learning back-end, having spent all of my time so far learning front-end.
I'm currently learning Svelte, so I did think perhaps I just continue and learn Sveltekit and that's "technically" full stack, but probably not the best way to learn? so I figure hey, why don't I just learn NodeJS (and Express I guess)?! So that's where i'm at right now.
So I'm after a little help on getting started, I have the Node official docs, I wondered if anyone had resources/courses they used instead to get started that were helpful? I know The Odin Project and Full Stack Open both have NodeJS in them after you go through React, issue is I don't want to just jump into their NodeJS as they tend to link it back to previous projects etc..
Thanks!
16 Replies
Well I haven't used Svelte nor SvelteKit (yet) but I think your decision to learn Node.js is spot on, as I you're likely going to have to use some things that are done differently than what you're used to, even though it's still JavaScript.
Good resources that only talk about Node.js I would say the Net Ninja playlist is very good. You should find two playlists from him about Node.js actually, as he re-filmed it around 2020 to maintain it up to date. Don't let the date discourage you the core principles are the same.
YouTube
Node.js Crash Course Tutorial
Hey gang, in this Node.js tutorial series you'll learn node from the ground up - what it is, how to use it and how to make dynamic websites powered by it. Yo...
Even more recently he released another series building a blog with Node + Express + MongoDB if you are interested.
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The net ninja is great! Thanks for the reply, I’ll check it out 🙂
I don't necessarily have any resources to suggest, but SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY. it's much easier to fuck up backend security than it is to fuck up front end security, and the consequences are invariably much worse as well. Make sure you learn the basics
imma keep it real
skip the mongo db video 
should start with relational dbs for sure
https://planetscale.com/courses/mysql-for-developers/introduction/course-introduction
planetscale has a great course on it
it's "MySQL" but 95% of the stuff there is just SQL
should start with relational dbs for sure
https://planetscale.com/courses/mysql-for-developers/introduction/course-introduction
planetscale has a great course on it
it's "MySQL" but 95% of the stuff there is just SQLSam Meech-Ward
YouTube
MySQL Node.js Express
I'll show you how to connect your node application to a MySQL database to query and insert data. I will also show you how to integrate this into an express server to show what a complete backend might look like.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:32 Setup MySQL
1:50 Setup Node App
2:46 Connect to MySQL from Node
4:40 Basic Queries
7:24 Environment Variab...
this video will show you how to actually use mysql in node
and even some express stuff
the course is to learn SQL, the video to learn how to use it in node, watch both
as far as security goes OWASP is a great resource you can checkout their top 10 of most common vulnerabilities
https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/
an importan one I don't see mentioned often in these videos is usage control: Throttling, Rate-Limiting, Securing your API (you might not always want to or be able to, so then you ensure you got control in place for DoS attacks)
Yeah my main concern is to learn about security. Doesn’t matter much if I mess it up on frontend but backend is a “you’re fired” kinda situation 😂
@erickohm thanks for all of that! I’ll check it out 😅
sounds like a lot?
cause it 
but take it easy
but take it easytechnically "you're fired" would be a shitty response, security issues are an institutional problem, not down to an individual dev unless you're working alone and then it's still an institutional problem 😄
most big security fuck ups don't involve firing the devs who directly hit the buttons, simply because their colleagues should've caught the errors in code review, and management should have been ensuring that those code reviews are being done properly, not to mention if it's important enough, they should be doing independent external security reviews
but yeah, it's still a very important topic for backend
oh there's also a lot of different types of APIs like uh... SOAP, REST, gRPC, etc
the most common is Restful
https://restfulapi.net/
that is what you'll be building 90% of the time
When I say fired I just meant it is a much bigger problem messing it up backend vs frontend haha, I guess. Rest api I have some knowledge in so that’s great.