A Complete Explanation of Front End vs Back End Developer – Maybe you are just starting to learn programming, or maybe you are ready to become a web developer. No matter where you are on your way to exploring programming, it is important to choose the right mix of tools, programming languages, and specializations that will match your career and personal goals.
Some web developers decide to specialize in a specific programming language (JavaScript, Python, Swift), while others develop expertise in a particular area of web development, such as mobile devices or databases. The most common difference for web developers is the choice between front end and back end, and as you progress in your studies you will inevitably come across these terms very often.
So what exactly is the difference between back end and front end web development, and what can you expect from each in terms of your skills and future work?
What is Front End Developer?
Front end developer refers to building the front part of the site which deals with the user experience and interface of the pages that the user or site visitors directly interact with. For this reason, the front is also often referred to as “client-side”, because it involves everything that happens on the client computer.
Front End Developer is responsible for customizing the look, feel, and behavior of the website. The user interface includes everything from font sizes and colors to forms to dropdown menus and forms. An excellent front-end experience is essential for attracting and retaining visitors.
Since front-end development focuses heavily on the appearance and aesthetics of a website, it is often confused with the term part of a person working in the web design field. While there is often some overlap in skills and responsibilities, the difference between designer and developer can usually be summed up as modeling versus implementation.
In carrying out their duties, the web designer or web designer can engage in user research, create wireframes and mock-ups, create graphics and logos , and choose fonts and color schemes . They dictate how the website will look and feel to users. Whereas Front-end web developers their main focus is more on the technical details of how to bring web applications to life.
What is Back End Developer?
Back End Developer, on the other hand, is about defining the internal logic of the website. If the front end of the website is called “client side”, then the back end is referred to as “server side” because it runs on the website server and not on the user’s computer.
Each back end of a website consists of three parts: server, database, and application. The back end developer writes code that allows these three components to interact and work together to perform functions and convey information to the end user.
For example, when you place an order through an online store, take the example of a popular online store in the world, namely Amazon or Ebay, the back end software will create a new entry in the website database containing information about your order (user or visitor) such as items, price, and shipping address. When you want to take an order or change some information, the back-end software will pull your specific entries from the web database and send the data to the front end of the site, where you can edit them.
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Difference Between Front-End and Back-End Developers
A good example of the difference between the front end and the back end of a website is Google Maps. Let’s say you open Google Maps to find the fastest way to get to your friend’s house. You enter your starting location and destination location on the front of the Google Maps website, and then it sends your search query to the back, which runs somewhere on Google’s servers. The back end of the website calculates, for some modes of transportation, the most efficient route between the two places you entered and sends this route back to your computer. The front-end will take this routing information and display it to you on a map of your current location.
The back-end developers for Google Maps are responsible for building a smart and efficient pathfinding algorithm that gets you where you want to go in no time. The front-end developer is responsible for presenting that information in a way that is attractive and easy for you to understand.
Once you understand the difference between a front-end and a back-end, you can start looking at any major website in terms of this division. For example, the Facebook back end includes a software application that determines how to order posts by your friends on your timeline and which users are recommended as friends, while the Facebook front end receives this information and displays it to you in a fun, easy-to-use and easy-to-understand interface.
The front end and back end are usually completely separate from each other. Facebook is constantly or frequently changing the algorithms on the back-end it uses to order content, but it’s rare for developers to change the front of the platform to reflect these changes.
Front End vs Back End: Skills Required
I hope that now that you know the difference between the front-end and back-end of a website, which programming language do you think is best learned for each field?
Front-End Developer Skills
The main front-end languages are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- HTML: A markup language used to describe the structure and content of a web page. Tags are the basic unit of HTML: They are enclosed in brackets and provide semantic information about the text they surround. One common use is to indicate page titles and titles. The HTML itself is invisible to the end user, but the commands are not.
- CSS: A style sheet language that works in conjunction with HTML to describe the design and appearance of web pages. For example, a CSS file could specify that any text surrounded by the HTML
tag, which is used for the hyperlink, appears green and bold. Both CSS and HTML files, as stated, are visible to the user; all they’ll see is a thick green link. - JavaScript: A programming language used to create interactivity and dynamic content on web pages. JavaScript can do everything from displaying the current date and time to validating user form input to adding animation. As with all programming languages, JavaScript is invisible to the end user, but its effect is visible on the objects it causes – such as shapes, images, etc.
Alongside the three pillars of front-end development, many programmers will use a variety of frameworks and libraries to make it easier to write and organize their front-end code. These addons to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript aim to make development faster and more structured.
Some of the most popular front-end frameworks and libraries include Bootstrap, jQuery, AngularJS and React (for JavaScript), plus Sass and LESS (for CSS). Front-end devs should also use a mobile-first or responsive design to ensure web pages perform well across devices.
Back-End Developer Skills
The roadmap for back-end development is a little less clear. The software that runs on the backside can be written in hundreds of different programming languages, so back-end developers usually narrow things down to the few languages that best suit their needs. JavaScript, although originally a front-end language, is increasingly being used on the back end, thanks to the popular server framework Node.js. Other common back-end languages include Java, Python, Ruby, and PHP.
Like front-end developers, back-end developers, too, use frameworks and libraries to maintain low-level technical details, so that developers themselves can focus on higher-level tasks as instructed. (Sorting is like using the “SUM” function in Excel, rather than adding them all up yourself, to get the result of the total count faster.) Frameworks and back-end libraries include Rails for Ruby, Laravel for PHP, and Django for Python. .
Almost every website that allows users to make requests will have a database on the back. In addition to programming language knowledge, back-end developers should have experience with database technologies such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL. This knowledge is used to write business logic, or a set of rules, into the back-end code. Developers use these rules to dictate how to model the database, how to write to the database, and how to ask them for relevant information.
General Skills
The above languages, frameworks and databases are not the only tools a web developer needs to know. There are several important technologies that front-end and back-end developers need to understand in order to be successful in the field of web programming. This includes HTTP Requests, the REST architectural style, and how clients and servers communicate over the internet. Other useful concepts that need to be studied are the model-view-controller (MVC) framework architecture pattern, platform as a services (PaaS) such as AWS and Heroku, and version control systems such as Git.
What is most needed at the job
Now that you know the skills front-end and back-end developers need, it’s important to know what kind of daily routine and work environment you can expect.
Web developers generally fall into two camps: office workers and freelancers. Most freelancers have had years of experience in the office before transitioning to freelance web development jobs doing side projects, this they do to build a portfolio and thus have loyal customers over time. A freelancer’s working day will vary depending on how many clients they have and what kind of work they do for each one. More of their time will be spent on non-development work – such as managing their calendars, project management and compiling status reports, and tracking hours – compared to internal (office) developers who are likely to have managers assigned a lot of more detailed work.
In-house developers generally start their day knowing what has happened since web creation began: emails, bug reports, pull requests, and code reviews. After that, they will likely fix bugs or create new features. Depending on the status and urgency of the current project, these can be assigned to them by the project leader or selected at their leisure.
Web developers of all lines spend a great deal of time working in close collaboration with their peers – other web developers, web designers, QA testers, product managers, and other members of IT and business teams. Nearly all web developers have at least one long meeting per week to set or randomize priorities and monitor progress, and many teams hold daily stand-up meetings to quickly get work done and work in queues.
For part-time web development employees, the proper way to organize work, collaborate and hold meetings will depend on the methodology the company is using. For example, a team using an agile development methodology works in a “sprint cycle,” and often holds daily scrums to complete unfinished tasks and tick them off of their Gantt chart.
Then which one should you choose?
If you are just starting out, then it is best if you learn the JavaScript programming language. Learning the intricacies of this one language and becoming familiar with frameworks like AngularJS or ReactJS will allow you to work across multiple platforms and on both sides i.e. front end and back end web development.
Now that you know the difference between front-end and back-end development, you’re ready to research more on your own to find out what types of jobs appeal to you the most or choose which ones you should really study from now on.
