[djmill]

Maybe for a small backend project, you could use Ruby on Rails? RoR gives you easy JSON API capabilities, an app server, and an out-of-the-box sqlite3 db.

I figured I'd throw it out there because for a beginner, all of these things would be wrapped into one application and it might be easier for a beginner to maintain; however, you'd need to call out that not all frameworks have everything that RoR has.

And I'm not saying RoR is a 'best practice' backend approach, because I'd never use it as a real backend service, but it might fit in nicely with your bootcamp!