The MERN (Mongo, Express, React, and Node) stack is an excellent choice for building powerful and flexible data-driven web applications. In this 20-video course, leaners will discover how to employ different technologies that make up the MERN stack to build a basic authentication application for full stack development. Begin by examining key considerations to observe when planning a MERN app, then create a MongoDB Atlas account and a working cluster for a MERN app. Connect to MongoDB Atlas and explore how to handle errors. Learn how to build data models for a MERN app by using MongoDB and Mongoose, validate request body payloads, and configure JWT (JSON Web Token) authentication. Next, you will learn how to create and use middleware, and create unit tests by using the Jest unit testing framework. Examine how to configure React and Redux and use type checking with PropTypes, and how to manage state by using reducers and actions. The course concludes with a demonstration of deploying a MERN application to Heroku cloud-based platform as a service.