You can be a full stack developer only knowing JavaScript
In the olden days the server used to generate the web pages and send them back to the browser. Heavy weight servers ran technologies like Servlets, JSPs and Enterprise Java Beans.
Then more recently we moved to one page browser apps where the javascript is loaded at start up.
The javascript makes calls to the back end and retrieves json data. The javascript works on the DOM of the browser and changes html tags and injects data into them.
There are lots of JavaScript libraries or frameworks which are designed to manipulate the DOM of the browser.
Here at SpotADev we use frameworks like Angular and libraries like ReactJS.
JavaScript became increasingly popular and a Chrome JavaScript Runtime called nodeJS was created which allowed JavaScript to be run outside a browser on the backend.
Companies put a lot of time into deciding which technologies to use for their stack. This decision has implications for hiring software developers. If the technologies are obscure and not used a lot, the company can find it hard sourcing devs who know the tech.
By using JavaScript on the front end (browser) and backend (nodeJS) the same devs can work on both the frontend and backend. This means there is a bigger selection of software developers to choose from.
Some smart people realised that they could embed a browser into an Android or IOS App and make it look like a native app. This made it possible for the same JavaScript developers who work on the frontend and backend to also work on Android and IOS apps.
This led to some smart people building frameworks like IONIC. IONIC works on the idea that you can embed a browser inside an Android or IOS app and as long as the look and feel of the web app sitting inside the embedded browser looks like an Android or IOS app then from all intents and purposes it can pass off as an Android and IOS app.
Back: Streams
Page Author: JD