Introduction to Backend Development

This course is where you stop building static pages and start building the server side that actually makes a web app work — handling requests, talking to a database, keeping users logged in, and not getting hacked along the way. You'll spend the semester in Node.js and Express, wiring up routes, MySQL via Docker, file uploads, sessions with bcrypt, and a REST-style API that a single-page frontend can hit with fetch. It's the natural follow-up to your frontend and intro programming courses, and it's what makes later work in mobile, web services, and the graduation project possible — by the end you should be able to ship a small full-stack app yourself.