As a typical backend developer, you will develop the backend of web and mobile applications, even desktop applications, using web application tools, frameworks, libraries, protocols, and a manageable number of other related technologies. Often, you will work directly with frontend developers and database administrators and DevOps engineers, or you yourself will work with the database and take care of DevOps, depending on the project and the company you work for.
You will rarely, if ever, work with designers, unless you are a fullstack developer or working for a small company or for yourself.
You will create APIs, work directly with the database, create user authentication, implement proprietary algorithms and strategies, implement security measures for the web app and user data, fix all sorts of familiar and unfamiliar bugs, create real-time applications, and much more. Notice that the backend does not involve any UIUX development.
Prerequisites
- Competent problem-solving skills
- Skillful use of the computer and the either Windows, Linux, or Mac
- If you complete the frontend career path before you take the backend career path, you can skip the entire Becoming a JavaScript Expert course and the Git, Command Line, and GitHub course
Areas of Specialization Available
You can choose one of the areas of specialization below, which you will get to select when you fill out the application:
- Node Stack: Node, JavaScript, MongoDB, APIs, and more
- Blockchain and Node: Blockchain along with the Node Stack described above
- Python Stack: Python, PostgreSQL, and more, path to AI
- AI, Machine Learning: Mathematics for AI engineers, Machine Learning, big data, data mining, data analysis
What You will Learn in the Node Specialization
Typically, we teach you just about everything you should know to become confident and proficient in your career path. We aren't aware of any other similar program, to our knowledge, that does this. For example, you will learn:
- Backend JavaScript Web App Development
- Node.js Stack
- Database Fundamentals and Admin
- MongoDB or PostgreSQL
- Backend Web Application Development
- Principles of Backend Development, or Art of Backend Development
- APIs
- Real-Time Communication
- Authentication
- Intro to DevOps
- Building and Deploying a Real-World App
We focus on the following three core technical skills:
- Problem-Solving: You will learn from the basics how to solve logic and algorithm problems, and you will learn how to become a skilled problem-solver. You yourself will even solve scores, possibly, hundreds of problems.
- Programming: We expect you to graduate with confidence and expertise in the programming language or languages you need to master to excel in this backend career path. Specifically, you will learn much of the entire JavaScript language—the important JavaScript concepts relevant to backend development. We expect you to become a confident and formidable JavaScript engineer by the time you graduate. You also have the option to learn Python.
- Domain Proficiency: For backend engineering, we teach you the tools, techniques, and technologies used by professional backend developers and we expect you to be skilled in those technologies and tools.
Projects You Build
You will develop the following:
- Your portfolio, which will showcase your work, your Evidential Degree
- More than a half a dozen projects, some of them pure JavaScript projects
- One sophisticated real-world web app that will be used to solve real problems. This project will
be your Pinnacle Project, your graduation project, which you will start developing before you
graduate. You won't complete the project before graduation. This project must meet the following
requirements:
- It must be significant in scope; it can't be a simple UI component or a portfolio-like website.
- It must advance humanity in some regard.
- If it is a for-profit (that is, not a nonprofit and not an open-source project), it must have the potential to help you gain some ind of long-term benefit.
Your Pinnacle Project can be an AI Humanity or Bov Academy project. For more on this, you may contact Nathan Plummer, NathanP@BovAcademy.
Jobs You May Qualify For: Backend Engineer, Software Engineer, Backend Developer, JavaScript Backend Developer, JavaScript Developer, Advanced JavaScript Developer, Node.js Developer, MongoDB (or PostgreSQL) Developer
Career Path Start Date
TBD, Likely Sometime in 2019*
* Important Note: When the students of our current cohorts complete CP4, the backend career path, we will begin to admit new students to the career path.
You may apply now for one of expected limited spots.
Subscription Plans
Basic
- Access to your career path resources *
- Access to our question-and-answer (QA) platform, similar to StackOverflow
- Help from assistant instructors via QA
- Instructor feedback and code review on team projects and final project
Pro
- Everything offered in Basic
- Custom portfolio and custom team projects (each helps with real experience and increased starting salary) created by Richard Bovell and designed by Sam Chittenden
- Opportunity to build a consequential AI Humanity project
- Instructor feedback and code review on project all project assignments
Premium
- Everything offered in Pro
- Opportunity to build a significant real-world paid project for assignments. Some student can make over $3,000 for a project, depending on the project
- Custom real-world Pinnacle Project (significant in scope, advances humanity, and potential for long-term financial success) created by Richard Bovell and designed by Sam Chittenden
- Instructor review and feedback on all assignments—exercises, articles, answers, projects, hackathon projects, real-world projects, and graduation project
* Important Note: Bov Academy does not give students all of the
chapters and courses at once.
Students work on one chapter at a time. When they complete a
chapter, they submit it and request the next chapter in the course. A student can request a maximum of
three chapters at once and must complete and submit them before requesting more chapters. We recommend
students work on one chapter at a time.