Modern full stack web development

The life of a full stack developer would be worthy of a whole book by itself, so let's leave that topic for another day.

Instead, let's look at a user story from a full stack Java web application and see what is involved.

Let's use an example of developing a user management module for a typical Java web application. Let's assume that you would be writing unit test cases for all of the code, and so we won't look at it in detail here:

1. You would start by designing the architecture for the feature. You would decide on the plugins and frameworks to use, patterns to follow, and so on.
2. You will be modeling the domain model for the feature depending on the database technology used.
3. Then, you would create server-side code and database queries to persist and fetch data from the database.
4. Once the data is ready, you would implement server-side code for any business logic.
5. Then, you would implement an API that can be used to provide data for the presentation over an HTTP connection.
6. You would write integration tests for the API.
7. Since the backend is ready, you would start writing frontend code in JavaScript or similar technology.
8. You would write client-side services to fetch data from the backend API.
9. You would write client-side components to display the data on a web page.
10. You would build the page and style it as per the design provided.
11. You would write some automated end-to-end tests for the web page.
12. You are not done yet. Once you have tested whether everything works locally, you would create pull requests or check the code into the version control system used.

13. You would wait for the continuous integration process to verify everything and fix anything that is broken.
14. Once everything is green and the code is accepted, you would typically start the deployment of this feature to a staging or acceptance environment, either on-premises or to a cloud provider using technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. If you choose the latter, you would be expected to be familiar with the cloud technologies used as well. You would also be upgrading the database schema as necessary and writing migration scripts when required.
15. Once the feature is accepted, you might be responsible for deploying it into the production environment in a similar way, troubleshooting issues where necessary. In some teams, you might swap the steps with other team members so that you would be deploying a feature developed by your coworker while they deploy yours.
16. You might also be responsible, along with your coworkers, for making sure that the production environment is up and running, including the database, virtual machines, and so on.

As you can see, it is no easy task. The range of responsibilities spans from making stylesheet updates on the client-side to running database migration scripts on a virtual machine in the production cloud service. If you are not familiar enough with the setup, then this would be a herculean task, and you would soon be lost in the vast ocean of frameworks, technologies, and design patterns out there.

Full stack development is not for the faint-hearted. It takes a lot of time and effort to keep yourself up to date with the various technologies and patterns in multiple disciplines of software development. The following are some of the common problems you might face as a full stack Java developer:

• Client-side development is not just about writing plain HTML and JavaScript anymore. It is becoming as complex as server-side development, with build tools, transpilers, frameworks, and patterns.
• There is a new framework almost every week in the JavaScript world, and if you are coming from a Java background, it could be very overwhelming for you.
• Container technologies such as Docker revolutionized the software industry, but they also introduced a lot of new stuff to learn and keep track of, such as orchestration tools and container management tools.
• Cloud services are growing day by day. To stay on track, you would have to familiarize yourself with their APIs and related orchestration tools.

• Java server-side technologies have also undergone a major shift in recent times with the introduction of JVM languages, such as Scala, Groovy, and Kotlin, forcing you to keep yourself up to date with them. On the other side, server-side frameworks are becoming more feature-rich, and therefore more complex.

The most important thing of all is to make sure that all of these work well together when required. This task will need a lot of configuration, some glue code, and endless cups of coffee.

It's very easy to get lost here, and this is where technologies such as JHipster and Spring Boot step in to help. We will look at the details of these technologies in later chapters, but in short, they help by providing the wiring between moving parts so that you only need to concentrate on writing business code. JHipster also helps by providing the abstractions to deploy and manage the application to various cloud providers.