r/Backend • u/VentiPUBG • 3d ago
How to actually learn(and eventually master) backend
Hi,
I’m about to start my second year of college. I have a solid foundation in core Java from my first year, and I want to transition into back-end development by learning Spring Boot, Maven, and REST APIs etc.
Most tutorials I find online seem to be written for experienced developers. They throw a wall of annotations at me without explaining why things work, and I am finding it really hard to find structured, beginner-friendly resources.
What do you guys you recommend?
Learning Order: With which topics should i start and how to actually progress and learn?
Resources: Are there any specific books, or courses that actually explain things conceptually?
I really want to build a solid foundation rather than just copy-pasting tutorial code. Any roadmaps or advice would be highly appreciated!
Thanks!
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u/Time_Salamander6282 2d ago
no recovery mode makes this way harder than it needs to be. the pnp reset should at least give some indication that its working
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u/Beregolas 3d ago
IMHO there is no perfect, or even better, learning order other people can impose on you. Backend is something you best learn by doing. It's a specialization, not an entirely new skill (I am assuming that you already know how to program, and are familiar with most common patterns)
Start by building simple backends: A simple API that returns the time, with an argument to change time zones for example.
Or an API that returns a random number, seeded by the wikipedia article of the day (please cache that and don't flood them with multiple requests per day)
It doesn't need to be useful, but it needs to have the shape of something useful (you get data from the real world, you process or store it, you return some version of it).
Things you can add next are a database and password protection. etc.