Backend for Beginners

REST basics: resources, verbs

Request validation & errors

Pagination/filtering/sorting

API versioning (overview)

Documentation: OpenAPI (overview)

SQL basics: SELECT/JOIN/GROUP BY

Data modeling: entities & relations

Indexes basics and when to use them

Transactions and isolation (overview)

Migrations & seeders

Sessions vs JWT (overview)

Password hashing & password policies

RBAC basics (roles/permissions)

Common web vulns (OWASP overview)

Rate limiting & brute force defense

Unit tests basics

Integration tests for APIs

Logging and structured logs

Error handling strategy

Local debugging workflow

Env config and secrets basics

Database migrations on deploy

Reverse proxy basics (Nginx overview)

Basic monitoring (uptime/logs)

Backups: strategy and restore drill