Mean Stack vs. Full Stack: Which Is The Ideal Framework?

Web development is evolving at a phenomenal pace, as more advanced and better frameworks are springing up with time. That being said, we must all know that any web application or website is made of two different parts. Namely the front-end and back-end. The developers equipped with the necessary skills and experience to deal with these are full stack and mean stack developers. Today we will take a detailed look at both full stack and mean stack development to get a comprehensive understanding of the matter. But first, let us understand the basics of web development.

What is Web Development?

Web development is the process of developing or designing web applications or websites for businesses, personal usage, mobile phones, and more. As mentioned earlier. The most important thing to understanding here is that web development can be divided into two different components. Front-end web development and back-end web development.

• Front-end Web Development: Front-end web development is also known as client-side development. Developers leverage this development process to facilitate the management of web applications and develop interactive websites using different programming languages. Such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5.
• Back-end Web Development: Also known as server-side development, back-end web development mainly focuses on scripting, databases, and coding. Further, back-end development is also used to store and retrieve data from databases.

When it comes to full-stack developers, they are qualified to work on both back-end, front-end, and other APIs. On the contrary, Mean stack developers are competent enough to work on specific frameworks, including ExpressJS, NodeJS, MongoDB, and ExpressJS.    

Advantages Of Full-Stack Development

• Liberty To Switch Based On Convenience And Requirement: A full-stack developer has the liberty to switch back and forth between back-end and front-end development based on their needs and requirements.
• Seamless Management Of The Team: As all the developers involved in full-stack development are always on the same page, it becomes easier to manage the team quickly.
• Easy Prototyping: Full-stack development makes it very easy to create a prototype. The developers can leverage the opportunity to master all the techniques during the ongoing development process.

Disadvantages Of Full Stack Development

• Having A Lot On The Plate: A full-stack developer has many responsibilities to take care of, which might sometimes result in an increased workload.
• Increased Chances Of Things Going Wrong: Full-stack development is a complex and comprehensive process meaning that the chances of things going wrong are more.
• Difficulty In Keeping Up With The Latest Trends: As we know, a full stack developer has a lot to deal with, making it challenging to keep up with all the latest trends. As a result, there might be times when developers are not aware of the latest development tools available in the market.

Advantages Of Mean Stack Web Development   

• Leveraging JavaScript: The mean stack is solely based on very popular JavaScript that is free of any type of charge. Therefore, a mean stack website can leverage this to develop some unique web applications.
• Uniform Language: Mean stack has a shallow memory footprint, and it also allows developers to use a single uniform language throughout the stack.
• Leveraging MongoDB and Node.JS: Mean stack developers can leverage Node.JS to simplify the layers of the server and take advantage of MongoDB. It is specially curated for cloud applications.  

Disadvantages Of Mean Stack Web Development

• Increased Chances Of Losing The Records: Opting for mean stack development means one has to deal with increased chances of losing records.
• Challenging For Large-Scale Applications: When it comes to large-scale applications, mean stack web development might not be as easy as one might want it to be.
• Difficult To Access Old Data: It becomes very challenging to access the old data after developing mean stack applications.  

Similarities Between Full Stack Web Development And Mean Stack Web Development

The first and the most notable similarity between the two. Is that there is a huge demand for expertise in both fields. On the one hand, we have full-stack developers who are equipping with enhanced knowledge. On the other hand, we have mean stack development where the developers are more mindful about the projects related to JavaScript. 

Conclusion

As we can see, both full-stack and mean stack development have their specific perks and downsides. Therefore, one must evaluate all the pros and cons before moving forward with any particular web development technique. The market is full of full stack and means stack development companies, and as mean-stack is a part of full-stack. Therefore, developers have to learn mean-stack to be able to work using full-stack web development.