Learning MEAN Stack

Dhanya Arumughom -

An Introduction to MEAN stack

Web development has evolved at a rapid pace over the past few years. There are innumerable newer technologies developed perennially for building richer and dynamic websites. If you want to develop a website, there are a variety of frameworks and technologies to choose from. Web developers often use a combination of various technologies to get the job done. To build best quality websites you need to equip yourself with the cutting edge libraries, database systems, front-end frameworks and servers. This set of components that integrates to provide an end to end framework for building a complete web application is referred to as a ‘Full Stack’.

A full stack includes components working with three different layers- Presentation layer (front end which deals with the User Interface), Business Logic layer (backend dealing with data validation) and the database layer. MEAN stack is a ‘Full stack’ development tool kit which uses a collection of JavaScript based technologies. JavaScript has evolved so much from just a programming language used for front end development to add interactivity to websites to a language which can be used for front end (client-side) and back-end (Server-side) scripting and is capable to power a ‘ full stack’ for web development.

Components of MEAN stack

MEAN is an abbreviation for the technologies used in the stack – MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node. All these four technologies from JavaScript are integrated in MEAN to build full-stack JavaScript applications. Now, let’s see the components one by one.

  • MongoDB: A NoSQL document database which is used by your back-end application to store its data as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) documents.
    Express (sometimes referred to as Express.js): popular web application framework for Node.js running on top of Node.js and simplifies the server-side scripting using Node.js. Express.js helps to publish the app on your website.
  • Angular (or Angular.js, which has had many versions by now): Front-end JavaScript web application framework. It is used in developing client-side applications with modular code and a data binding User Interface.
  • Node.js: JavaScript runtime environment built on chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine .It is a framework to develop server-side applications using the JavaScript language. It combines with ExpressJS for the application development.

An excellent thing about MEAN stack is that each of these components of the MEAN stack are emerging as a winner in its respective category.

Why MEAN stack?

MEAN stack is one of the most popular and talked about stacks these days and preferred by developers for Full stack development. There are many reasons for this. Let’s take a look on few of the major reasons for its popularity.

  • The most apparent benefit of using MEAN stack is that the complete code is written in JavaScript which makes it very convenient for developers. A developer who is good in JavaScript can easily master all the components of MEAN.
  • It is open source and free to use.
    Each component of the MEAN stack has its advantages and contributes to the excellent performance of the Stack as a whole and makes a superb combo.
    The non blocking architecture of Node.js makes MEAN superfast.
  • The front end framework Angualr.js offers maintenance, reusability and testability.
    Coming to the database, MongoDB is an extremely flexible database as it is not required to pre define the schema as in SQL databases and thus is very easy to update the tables in MongoDB. Also, Mongo DB is cloud compatible and comes with automatic sharing and full cluster support making MEAN stack the best choice if your application is to be hosted on cloud.
  • MEAN stack uses a common JSON format for data at all layers which makes it easier to pass data between client and server as there is no need to convert data using libraries during interactions. JSON also allows working with external APIs easy.
  • MEAN is cross compatible and supports various operating systems- MS Windows, MAC OS and LINUX.
  • MEAN supports the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture which eases the development with lot of advantages like code reuse, parallel development, faster development process and so on.

Learn MEAN

Full stack developers are in great demand these days. MEAN is a very effective approach for full stack web development and gaining lot of popularity. With all the advantages mentioned above it is definitely a stack worth learning for full stack development. Another important reason for you to learn MEAN is employability and opportunities associated with the stack. The technologies that compose MEAN stack, MongoDB, Node, Express and Angualr are the JavaScript skills in high demand which many employers look for.

Before starting to learn the MEAN stack one should be familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Familiarity with server side and client side scripting is good too. Then you can learn the components of the stack one by one.

Best Tutorials for MEAN Stack

We have collected a list of some of the best beginner level tutorials on MEAN Stack.

Best Courses For MEAN Stack

However, if you already decided to take a deep dive, here are some of the best courses we found on MEAN Stack.

For Intermediate Level