Important Topics Every Beginner Backend Dev Must Know
Tags: webdev, beginners, programming, backend
Published: 2023-05-16 23:54:49

**These are essential topics every beginner backend dev must know regardless of the backend language**

- Variable Declaration

- Data Types

- Type Casting

- Operators

- Concatenation

- String Functions

- Array Methods


We will be discussing about

❍ Definition of each topic
❍ Examples for each topic

1. Variables
In simple terms, Variables are "containers" for storing information.
**Creating variables**
Creating variables is also called declaring variables. Different programming languages have different ways of creating variables inside a program.
Let's declare a variable in PHP. In PHP, a variable starts with the $ sign, followed by the name of the variable

<?php
$txt = "Hello world!";
$x = 5;
$y = 10.5;
?>
After the execution of the statements above, the variable $txt will hold the value Hello world!, the variable $x will hold the value 5, and the variable $y will hold the value 10.5.

2. Data Types
In simple terms, a data type shows what type of value a variable holds and which operations can safely be performed to create, transform and use the variable in another computation. Most common data types in any backend language includes

- String (A sequence of characters e.g "Hello world!")

- Integer (whole numbers e.g -5, 0, 123)

- Boolean (logical true or false e.g true, false)

- Float (fractional numbers e.g -87.5, 0.0, 3.14159)

- Nothing (empty or null data)

3. Type Casting
In simple terms, type casting means converting a variable of a particular data type into another data type.
Let's convert an integer to string using C#
int myInt = 50;  // declaration of variable(myInt)

Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToString(myInt));    // convert int to string

4. Operators
Operators are used to perform operations on variables and values. They are divided into arithemtic, comparison, logical and assignment operators.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/npxk26o4ic319nbj2qwl.png)

5. Concatenation
Concatenation is the operation of joining two strings together.
Examples of concatenation in different programming language are:

hello & world : VB,VB.NET and Ada
strcat(hello, world) : C, C++
hello.world: Perl, PHP
hello || world : REXX, SQL
hello || world : FORTRAN
hello ++ world : Erlang, Haskell
hello ^ world : Ocaml, Standard ML, F#
hello + world : Java

6. String Functions
String functions are used in computer programming languages to manipulate a string or query information about a string.
Examples are:
Split(),Substring(),Trim(),Replace(),IndexOf(),ToLower(),ToUpper() and so on.

7. Array Methods
Array methods are functions built-in to JavaScript that we can apply to our arrays — Each method has a unique function that performs a change or calculation to our array and saves us from writing common functions from scratch.
Examples are:
arr.push(...items) – adds items to the end,
arr.pop() – extracts an item from the end,
arr.shift() – extracts an item from the beginning,
arr.unshift(...items) – adds items to the beginning.

The Summary of this article is to show some of the important topics every aspiring backend developer should know. There is always more to learn and improve upon. Thanks For Reading.