I’m guessing everytime someone mentions JAMStack, front-end developers feel like this…

And yes, I feel that way too every time someone talks about it. We cannot shut up about it either too. It’s the best stack out there for building web applications (my view). Think about it, no hassle thinking about whether the server is still up because your service provider takes care of that for you (for example Netlify and Zeit). It is in fact cheap since you pay for what you use, secure, fast and your web application can auto-scale on its own. Fun, right? Just working with JavaScript, APIs and writing markup to make meaning of your data.

About a year ago, I was given a task by a friend, build an application that would allow a user to record audio and save it on Azure Blob Storage. This should be easy, what’s the worst that can happen? Truth be told, I had never interacted with any of the Browser APIs, except for the DOM, and I had completely no idea how to start or build it. I did claim to be a web developer, but it was at that moment that I knew I barely knew anything, not that I know much now…but I’m trying 😂🤷‍♂️ (there is so much to do on the web, I grew older and wiser I guess).

After a couple of weeks scavenging the internet for tutorials, documentation, and sample applications, I stumbled onto Mozilla Developer Network. Everything had been laid out there. I hacked something up, a simple application in pure JavaScript. It felt overwhelming at first, but I soon learnt how things worked. After that, I ran discovered Azure Blob Storage API, my first time interacting with an external API that’s not jsontypicode. Copy, paste, glue stuff…it worked. Time to share my work with the world now. Can’t be so hard…is it?

I stumbled onto Netlify, and decided to give it a shot, and I was beyond pleased. Click, click…your site is live. One click deployments are one of the best things that have happened for us, especially for those who don’t like thinking about servers like me. The features I really love is the continuous deployment and serverless functions. No more server-side code.

There are plenty of other service providers that allow developers to build full stack applications without worrying about backend programming such as Firebase and FaunaDB and they are remarkable. These tools have revolutionized our workflows as front-end developers. I recommend you give them a shot and share with the rest of the world your experience.

Summary, I built a web application, glued the pieces together, deployed it for free and I could easily make iterations to improve the application. Does that make me a full stack developer? 🙈😛