What is the Difference Between Full Stack Developers and Mean Stack Developers?

The websites that you visualize on the web have a couple of sides. The initial one is the one seen by you, while another one functions in the background to manage its data. The former is known as front-end development, which comprises web design along with its interface. The second one is known as back-end development, which deals with server-side programming and databases.

It is imperative to invest in each of these sections to operate a website properly. 

Without a decent front-end development, any website is not going to appear great. In the same manner, it will not be capable of processing its information in case it does not have sufficient back-end development. Both these sectors are extremely complicated. Due to this reason, some specialists specialize in any one of these two web development disciplines.

Nevertheless, you will come across experts who will be able to manage both these divisions effectively. We call them full-stack developers. These experts learn lots of programming tools and languages, which help them to create websites quickly. One of these tools is known as the Mean stack.

In the subsequent paragraphs, we will discuss

The differences between Mean Stack and Full Stack Developers.

Mean Stack vs. Full Stack

By the term “full-stack”, we refer to a group of tools and programming languages learned by a developer for handling both front end as well as back end development of a site. On the contrary, Mean stack is actually a well-known full stack framework consisting of Express.js, MongoDB, AngularJS, plus NodeJS.

Even though full stack isn’t restricted to any specific language sets frameworks, for example, mean stack is. Being a full stack developer it will be essential for you to learn more than one language associated with web development in addition to several web design concepts.

While full stack primarily denotes the developer, Mean happens to a full stack framework acronym. Both of these have become extremely popular at present. Moreover, if you like to hire full stack developers, bear in mind that their demand is quite high right now. Nevertheless, these two are going to differ in lots of areas including the ones, which we have already mentioned earlier.

Related Guide: How to Hire Full Stack Developers for Your Next Project?

Front-end Development

There are many options for the mean stack, which help to make it ideal for powerful front-end development.

AngularJS is actually a front end framework allowing the developers to utilize HTML syntax while expressing different components as well. It aids in supporting 2-way data binding while enabling controller architectural patterns for creating bigger web apps. Responsive designs are needed by the contemporary websites out there.

Apart from maintaining the simplicity of the code, a responsible design likewise aids in improving the user experience while the website is able to adapt itself easily to various devices. Full stack plus mean stack consist of technologies in addition to features permitting effortless front end development. You will come across lots of developers who have affinity for mean stack instead of frond end development due to AngularJS. The developers need to make use of CSS3, HTML5, as well as JavaScript as the basics in both these cases.

Back end Development

The developer can make use of NodeJS with the help of mean stack for the server side programming. Besides NodeJS, Express.js likewise aids in this regard by making back end development simple. NodeJS allows you to make use of JavaScript intended for server-side programming.

It helps to create an environment where JavaScript can be used on the server.  Asynchronous programming is likewise supported by NodeJS and for the reason it is quite popular among many developers. Nevertheless, JavaScript does not have many features, which can assist it in server side programming.

It is quite restricted, and will not be able to provide powerful outcomes like the well-known server side languages such as Python and PHP in spite of having Express.js and NodeJS.

For this reason, full stack developers usually get the benefit in such cases. They happen to be acquainted with common server side languages that aid them in back end development. It will not be possible for the Mean stack developers to use C++, C#, PHP, plus languages to their advantage.

Also Read: Top 5 JavaScript Development Framework

Frameworks

Multiple frameworks can be accessed by any mean stack developer, which helps to speed up the different procedures related to the creation plus management of websites. They will be capable of performing front end web development simply by leveraging AngularJS framework’s enhanced speed. Since they will be studying JavaScript, they can also utilize other types of client side web frameworks, for example, ReactJS. They will be able to use NodeJS and Express.js for back end development as well. All these frameworks have been made for back end and front end development explicitly.

Nevertheless, the mean stack developers will not be able to use these options since they are not aware of other tools and frameworks. On the contrary, the full stack developers are aware of various frameworks which can be used by them if they think proper. In this regard, they have much more freedom.

Besides frameworks, there lies a significant difference between these 2 in terms of databases too.

In this regard, a mean stack developer is going to depend on MongoDB which happens to be a well-known choice amongst the contemporary web developers since it becomes easy to scale data. MongoDB happens to be an open-source, non-relational, NoSQL database focusing on storage of data that is document-based.

If you like to hire full stack developers it will be good to know that they have access to lots of SQL-based as well as relational databases. Therefore, they have many more options to select from and they are able to work on different types of projects quite quickly.

Similarities Between Mean Stack and Full Stack

After telling the differences between the two, we will now take a quick look at the similarities.

– Firstly, these two help to make an individual a comprehensive full stack developer. It will be possible to manage client side as well as server side projects effortlessly after learning any of these. While it is imperative by full stack development to learn more than one programming language covering front end as well as back end development, mean stack development needs you to become conversant with different frameworks for a similar purpose.

-There is a lot of demand for both of these fields of expertise. While full stack developers have enhanced knowledge, their counterparts are more aware of projects that are JavaScript related. Because of this, both of them will be beneficial for the company.

–Mean stack happens to be a part of full stack. Therefore, it will be imperative for you to train yourself in mean stack properly in case you would like to turn into an in-depth full stack developer.

Takeaway

Although this debate of “mean stack vs. full stack” is going to continue forever, we hope that we have clarified the topic in this article. Both these fields happen to be exciting, and it is entirely your discretion, which you opt for.