For those who don’t know, MERN stands for Mongo database, Express framework, React.js framework and Node.js runtime environment. Together they create a software stack for building custom web application.
Now that’s all the technical stuff, let me share what’s exactly I mean by all this..
So I know how to make simple websites with HTML and CSS. But the problem is, those sites are dumb, they don’t do anything.
If I wanted to make it more than a website, I needed to make it more dynamic. Like adding option for user registration. Give option to add content, comment on it. Do something with the input etc.
For many years, I used WordPress to build basic dynamic websites. However WordPress is very limited to what you can do with it.
To turn a WordPress site into a social website, I had to install a lot of plugins and do a lot of theme modifications. At the end of the day, it’s a hard thing to do, since WP was originally built to do one thing.
So I knew, if I wanted to build a true web application, I had to go to the custom route.
Enter React
React is a user facing front end framework to build cool web pages/web applications. I fell in love with react because you can do something on the page and get the result without having to refresh the browser.
It can even process the data without you having to press a submit button, see:
So it turns out, with simple react I can just create a bunch of todo style apps.
I realized that, react is not enough to build a full web application. It’s just the front layout of the complete app.
Enter Node
Node lets me make user registration option, ability to login, then submit content and all that cool stuff. I learned how to build a web app by building a simple Twitter clone app last season.
In that article I mentioned, I am not fully satisfied the way it’s turned out. It needs the reactness.
So this means I have to combine the magic of React with the power of Node.
Here Comes MERN
It was a long lasting dream of mind to build a full stack app with Node in the backend and React on the front. I finally built a project called Reddit Clone, this time it’s a MERN app.
How long it took me? Roughly 6 months, from Node, then React and finally MERN stack.
Yeah baby, I am now a MERN stack developer.
So what’s next?
Let’s build more awesome stuff!!
Comments:
Navdeep Singh: I can feel your excitement. Kudos to you bro. Keep it up. ~ Stay Foolish, Stay Focused.