Full-Stack Development from the Ground Up: Principles, Practices, and Technologies addresses the growing need for a comprehensive upper-division computer science textbook that provides in depth treatment of full-stack web development using the modern web development technologies that students are likely to encounter in industry. Professional full-stack web developers who are capable of developing both the front-end user interfaces and back-end databases and services for dynamic websites are in high demand.

The book begins by laying a foundation in HTML, CSS and JavaScript—the building blocks of client-side web development. It then explores one particular web development stack in detail: MERN, which stands for MongoDB, Express.js, React.js and Node.js. Together, these four technologies provide powerful support for full-stack web development in a single programming language—JavaScript. The crucial final step in the web development process is deploying apps to a server, so that users can interact with them. As with web development technologies, there is a dizzying array of options for deploying web apps. The book therefore simplifies deployment by focusing on just one web deployment environment: Amazon Web Services (AWS), and only those AWS tools that are absolutely necessary to deploy MERN applications. By guiding the reader step-by-step through the deployment process on AWS, this book aims to keep the focus on web development, not deployment.