Full Stack Developer VS Mean Stack Developer

If you are a modern-day entrepreneur, you must be well-versed with all the nitty-gritty of the business. Period. Besides the in-depth understanding of the market, the entrepreneur should have a sound understanding of the technologies he/she will be dealing with. This sound understanding will help you choose wisely between a full stack developer and a mean stack developer.

Full-stack development and Mean stack development are nothing but two of the leading web development concepts. Choosing between two new web development concepts becomes important as the future of your product depends on it. But if the web development concept is not in coherence with the product, it will die sooner in the market. Moreover, if you are unable to create an immersive environment on the website, you will not have high customer retention.

Despite being two major components of web development, full-stack and mean stack are misinterpreted in the tech realm. Therefore, to eliminate the confusion in this article we would try to clearly differentiate between a full stack developer and a mean stack developer.

Table of Content

• Who is a Full Stack Developer?
• Prerequisites of becoming a full stack developer
• Advantages of Full Stack development
• Disadvantages of full-stack development
• Responsibilities of a Full Stack Developer
• Education qualification and skill requirements
• Salary Structure for a Full Stack Developer
• Who is a Mean Stack Developer?
• Functions of the primary components of Mean Stack Development
• Prerequisites of becoming a Mean Stack Developer
• Advantages of Mean Stack Development
• Disadvantages of Mean Stack Development
• Responsibilities of a Mean Stack Developer
• Education qualifications and skill requirement
• Salary Structure for a Mean Stack Developer
• Conclusion

Who is a Full Stack Developer?

An IT professional who is well-versed in developing both client-side and server-side software is known as a Full-stack developer. These developers have high knowledge of working on projects that include high databases. In addition, they work with the clients during the nascent phase of the project besides building user-facing websites.

There is a rise in demand for full-stack developers because businesses around the world are going the digital way. Moreover, they can deal with front-end and back-end development so they become vital during the development process of the website.

Prerequisites of becoming a full stack developer

To become a full-stack developer, you must require certain skill-sets which are vital in full-stack development.

• They should be aware of certain functions like deployment, atomization, application and optimization of the website
• A full-stack developer must hold strong fort in back-end languages like CSS, HTML and JavaScript
• As development of full-stack is BFS, the developer must know the operation procedure of the website development
• Specialization in any of the back-end languages like ASP, Python, Node.JS, etc. would be handy
• They should also have knowledge about program database like SQLite, MySQL and mongo DB
• Understanding of visual design, project management, UI/UX would also be welcomed with open arms

As a profound full-stack developer who works greatly on both front-end and back-end, good knowledge about certain software is also necessary.

Front end software (Client-Side)

• Bootstrap
• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML
• Ember.js
• Storybook
• Backbone.JS
• jQuery
• Angular

Back end software (Server Side)

• Java
• PHP
• ASP
• Node.JS
• C++
• Python
• SQL
• SaaS
• Firebase.com
• Ruby

After getting a detailed understanding of the prerequisites, let us now dig deep into the pros and cons of full-stack development.

Advantages of Full Stack development

• It is easy to make a prototype through a full-stack. Moreover the developer has the chance to master all  techniques during the development process itself
• The full-stack developer can switch back and forth between front-end and back-end development according to their requirement
• Process of full-stack development is very cost-effective
• It is easier to maintain all the team members on the same page during the full stack development process
• The adaptability rate of the full stack developers are very high

Disadvantages of full-stack development

• During the full stack development process, there are high chances the chosen solution can be wrong
• As the full stack developer works across different skills so it becomes tough for them to keep up with the latest trends. Therefore, there might be chances of them being not aware of the latest tools going around in the market
• The full-stack developers are expected to carry out various responsibilities. As a result, they end up too much work-load and remain confused about their responsibilities

As we have seen that full-stack developers are expected to carry out various responsibilities, let us take a quick look on their work.

Responsibilities of a Full Stack Developer

• Developing backend web apps and front end web architecture
• A full-stack developer should be  ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the developments related to programming languages and website apps
• They should ensure that the developed website applications are highly responsive
• They must be able to develop and design immaculate APIs
• Ensure that the design of the website are pitch-perfect by working alongside with the developers
• Lastly, they must carry the ship of development from its inception to the finish line

Education qualification and skill requirements

As the full stack developers work closely with the clients so they must have good organizational skills. The other requirements are:

• Degree holder in Computer Science
• Excellent problem solving and communication skills
• Attention to detail is a must

Salary Structure for a Full Stack Developer

The salary structure of well –accomplished full-stack developers majorly depends on their demographic location. But, from entry-level to senior position, a full stack developer can draw anything between $80000- $115000 per annum.

Who is a Mean Stack Developer?

A Mean stack developer is an IT professional whose horizon of knowledge is limited to some particular areas.  They have expertise in working on JavaScript technologies for website application development.  The MEAN stack development has four technologies:

• M- mongo DB is without SQL Database
• E- Express is nothing but a back-end website application framework for Node.JS
• A- Angular is an open-source frontend website framework which is based on JavaScript
• N- Node.JS is a cross-platform run-time environment. The primary function of Node.JS is to develop network and server-side applications

MongoDB

MongoDB is an open-source and cross-platform database. Because it is written in C++ and is highly recommended to manage a database system with millions of data. Moreover, MongoDB is a boon for the mean stack developers as the entire application can be built with JavaScript.

Express.JS

Express.JS is a flexible and lightweight server framework so it is used to build hybrid, single and multi-page website applications. Moreover, it uses the Pug engine to render support for templates.

AngularJS

Google maintains Angular. The primary goal of the AngularJS framework is to include MVC in the browser-based application. But the (MVC) architecture also makes the testing process easier and the frameworks enable developers to build smarter website applications.

Because AngularJS has  data binding and dependency injection, it completely eradicates the penalty of code.

Node.js

It is a server-side JavaScript execution environment helping mean stack developers to build web apps on it. As Node.js is very efficient so it is highly used for data-intensive real-time apps. The developers have the luxury to run Node.js run time on either OS X, Linux, or Microsoft Windows.

Mean Stack gives the cushion to the application developer of transferring codes to other networks. In addition, the mean stack development process is very flexible which allows high-speed website application development.

Functions of the primary components of Mean Stack Development

The main ingredients of Mean Stack development perform some specific functionalities. They are as follows:

MongoDB: It retrieves and stores the data

ExpressJS: With an aim to run a response, ExpressJS's function is to make request to the database

AngularJS: Its main function is to accept requests and also show the results to the end-user

NodeJS: Its job is to comprehensively handle the server and client requests.

Prerequisites of becoming a Mean Stack Developer

In order to become an accomplished Mean Stack developer, you need to have certain qualities. We have listed a few of them below.

• To be a master mean stack developer, you must have in-depth knowledge about JavaScript
• The developer should be well-versed in a domain-specific language. This is because majority of working in Mean stack is done in domain-specific language
• They must have sound knowledge about the architecture design guidelines and the programming templates
• Good understanding and experience of SLDC and developing in an agile environment would be an added benefit
• Must have an in-depth knowledge about the DB architecture
• The Mean Stack developer should also have expertise in Symfony, OOPS, jQuery, MySQL and PHP

After discussing requirements and understanding about main components of the Mean stack, it’s time to look at the pros and cons.

Advantages of Mean Stack Development

Below are some prominent reasons about why you should opt for Mean stack development:

• Mean Stack is fully based on JavaScript which is completely free and highly popular. The Mean Stack developers can use its popularity to create awesome website applications
• MongoDB is curated for cloud applications and Node.js’ work is to simplify the server layer
• It has a very minimal memory footprint. Moreover, it allows the developers to use a uniform language throughout the stack.
• It helps in organizing the whole web application swiftly and avoids unnecessary groundwork
• The code in Mean Stack is isomorphic

Disadvantages of Mean Stack Development

Now let us have a look at the shortcomings of this leading web development concept

• If you opt for Mean stack development, there are high chances that you might potentially lose records
• The isolation of server from the business logic is very poor
• Mean stack development is not at its very best when it comes to large-scale applications.
• It becomes very tough to go back to approach the old data when the web app is already developed
• There is no mention of specific JavaScript program coding guidelines

Responsibilities of a Mean Stack Developer

• With an aim to support a highly scalable product, the mean stack developer is expected to define code architecture decisions. Moreover, the end product should have minimal footprint
• The mean stack developer should be capable of maintaining large and complex databases. The database can either be relational or non-relational or both
• The mean stack developer should build interactive customer/user data from various platforms.
• The developer must be proficient in refining and integrating the development tools and software according to the requirement
• They should easily identify the issues of non-production and production apps as a part of the deployment
• Mean stack developers should be on the same page with researchers, data implementation specialists, and engineers throughout the development process.

Education qualifications and skill requirement

• Holding a bachelors or a master’s degree in engineering (B.Tech, M.Tech) or master’s in computer applications (MCA)
• Excellent research skills
• Committed to the job in order to deliver the best results
• Strong management and analytical skills

Salary Structure for a Mean Stack Developer

Just like the full-stack developer, the salary of a mean stack developer also depends on their demographics. Moreover, a well-trained and experienced mean stack developer can draw a salary of $50000 to $100,000 based on his/her skills.

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Conclusion

Both Mean Stack development and Full Stack development processes have their share of pros and cons. And as far as their developers are concerned, the companies should first zero-down their requirements and then look for them. Because as we can see, the skill-set of a full stack developer is different from a mean stack developer.

Besides being very distinct from each other, full stack and mean stack have some similarities as well. Mean Stack is eventually a part of full-stack. Therefore, as a developer, you have to know the mean stack in order to work comprehensively on the full stack.