Backend

Backend Developer

Step by step guide to becoming a modern backend developer in @currentYear@

This page is a visitor-friendly snapshot of how William currently sees this area: what feels strong, what is still being refined, and where the evidence is still partial.

22

Done

11

Learning

0

Target

0

Skipped

155

Tracked

Status meanings

Done: enough evidence to present this area as a solid strength.

Learning: an area of active development with growing confidence.

Target: relevant and intentional, but still earlier in the journey.

Skipped: not a current priority relative to other areas.

How the estimates are formed

Profile and manual review: 8

Evidence from project experience: 6

Competency mapping alignment: 19

Quiz-backed updates: 0

These signals help estimate progress, but they are still best treated as directional rather than perfectly complete.

Areas currently being strengthened

Web Security

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Testing

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Redis

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Graceful Degradation

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Circuit Breaker

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Instrumentation

This is actively developing and would benefit from more practice, proof, or recent examples.

Search Engines

Untracked

Learn about APIs

Done
Project experienceEvidence: experience

Open API Specs

Untracked

Introduction

Done
Competency mapping

How does the internet work?

Updated 3/21/2026

Done
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: theoretical

What is HTTP?

Updated 3/21/2026

Done
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: theoretical

What is Domain Name?

Untracked

What is hosting?

Untracked

DNS and how it works?

Untracked

Browsers and how they work?

Untracked

Rust

Untracked

PHP

Untracked

Go

Untracked

JavaScript

Untracked

Java

Untracked

Python

Done
Project experienceEvidence: experience

C#

Done
Competency mapping

Ruby

Untracked

Pick a Backend Language

Untracked

Version Control Systems

Done
Competency mapping

Git

Done
Competency mapping

GitLab

Untracked

Repo Hosting Services

Untracked

GitHub

Done
Competency mapping

MS SQL

Untracked

MySQL

Untracked

MariaDB

Untracked

Relational Databases

Done
Competency mapping

PostgreSQL

Done
Competency mapping

SQLite

Untracked

Oracle

Untracked

NoSQL Databases

Untracked

ORMs

Done
Competency mapping

Normalization

Untracked

ACID

Done
Competency mapping

Failure Modes

Untracked

Profiling Performance

Untracked

N+1 Problem

Untracked

More about Databases

Untracked

Transactions

Done
Competency mapping

Scaling Databases

Untracked

CAP Theorem

Untracked

Sharding Strategies

Untracked

Data Replication

Untracked

Database Indexes

Untracked

JSON APIs

Done
Competency mapping

SOAP

Untracked

gRPC

Untracked

REST

Done
Project experienceEvidence: experience

GraphQL

Done
Competency mapping

HTTP Caching

Untracked

Caching

Updated 3/21/2026

Done
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: theoretical

Web Security

Learning
Competency mapping

Testing

Updated 3/21/2026

Learning
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: experience

Integration Testing

Updated 3/21/2026

Learning
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: experience

Unit Testing

Updated 3/21/2026

Learning
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: experience

Functional Testing

Untracked

CI / CD

Done
Competency mapping

Monolith

Done
Competency mapping

SOA

Untracked

Architectural Patterns

Done
Competency mapping

Microservices

Learning
Competency mapping

Serverless

Untracked

Service Mesh

Untracked

Twelve Factor Apps

Done
Competency mapping

RabbitMQ

Untracked

Kafka

Untracked

Message Brokers

Untracked

LXC

Untracked

Server Sent Events

Untracked

Nginx

Untracked

Caddy

Untracked

Apache

Untracked

MS IIS

Untracked

Learn about Web Servers

Untracked

Building For Scale

Untracked

Redis

Learning
Competency mapping

Memcached

Untracked

MongoDB

Untracked

CouchDB

Untracked

Neo4j

Untracked

Graceful Degradation

Learning
Project experienceEvidence: experience

Throttling

Untracked

Backpressure

Untracked

Loadshifting

Untracked

Circuit Breaker

Learning
Project experienceEvidence: experience

Instrumentation

Learning
Project experienceEvidence: experience

Monitoring

Updated 3/21/2026

Learning
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: experience

Telemetry

Untracked

MD5

Untracked

SHA

Untracked

scrypt

Untracked

bcrypt

Untracked

HTTPS

Untracked

OWASP Risks

Untracked

SSL/TLS

Untracked

CORS

Untracked

Server Security

Untracked

CSP

Untracked

Authentication

Untracked

JWT

Untracked

Basic Authentication

Untracked

Token Authentication

Untracked

OAuth

Untracked

Cookie Based Auth

Untracked

OpenID

Untracked

SAML

Untracked

Elasticsearch

Untracked

Solr

Untracked

Real-Time Data

Untracked

WebSockets

Untracked

Long / Short Polling

Untracked

Redis

Untracked

DynamoDB

Untracked

Firebase

Untracked

RethinkDB

Untracked

Influx DB

Untracked

TimescaleDB

Untracked

Cassandra

Untracked

AWS Neptune

Untracked

Observability

Updated 3/21/2026

Learning
Profile and manual reviewEvidence: experience

Frontend Basics

Untracked

HTML

Untracked

CSS

Untracked

JavaScript

Untracked

ClickHouse

Untracked

ScyllaDB

Untracked

DGraph

Untracked

Migrations

Untracked

Claude Code

Untracked

Copilot

Untracked

Cursor

Untracked

Antigravity

Untracked

Documentation Generation

Untracked

Learn the Basics

Untracked

How LLMs work

Untracked

AI vs Traditional Coding

Untracked

Embeddings

Untracked

Vectors

Untracked

AI Assisted Coding

Untracked

Prompting Techniques

Untracked

Gemini

Untracked

OpenAI

Untracked

Anthropic

Untracked

Refactoring

Untracked

Applications

Untracked

Code Reviews

Untracked

Integration Patterns

Untracked

Streaming

Untracked

Structured Outputs

Untracked

Function Calling

Untracked

RAGs

Untracked

MCP

Untracked

Skills

Untracked

Agents

Untracked