Front-end VS back-end -Web development

    • introduce
    • The front-end development
    • The backend development

If you’re a developer, you’re just learning code and want to focus on Web development, but are confused about which path to take. Is it front-end Web or back-end Web development, or have you started your journey and are you wondering if you’re on the right track? This will be a good article for you to read. It is important to start with a good understanding of both front-end and back-end Web development.

introduce

Front-end development, often referred to as client development, focuses on everything you see, experience, and interact with on a website or application.

On the other hand, we have back-end development, often referred to as server-side development, which will be much more focused on functionality, data, algorithms and so on.

The front-end development

Front-end Web development is the practice of turning data into a graphical interface using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so that users can view and interact with that data.

— Wikipedia

Front-end development covers everything you often see on a web site or application. Things like layouts, drop-down menus, buttons and responsive design. If you want to do front-end development, the three core languages you need to learn are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All of these technologies enable us to design websites and allow interaction on the client side (i.e. the browser). In addition, there are front-end frameworks for CSS, such as Bootstrap, Foundation, Stylus, Semantic UI, Tailwind CSS, etc., to speed up the workflow. React, Vue, and Angular for JavaScript are tools developers use to develop advanced Web applications.

A good analogy to describe front-end development is like a restaurant. There are restaurants, the main restaurants where customers sit, and the service staff bring the menu, the customers read it, place the order, and then serve them the food. This is the client side, and this is what the user sees in the browser, where they can interact with the site using JavaScript and view the information displayed using HTML and CSS.

Enough about front-end development, now let’s move on to back-end development.

The backend development

Back-end Web development is the core computing logic of a website, software, or information system. Back-end developers create components and functions that users can access indirectly through front-end applications or systems.

— Wikipedia

The back end is the behind-the-scenes structure and process that makes everything work, including storing and organizing data and creating algorithms and complex logic for a seamless experience on the front end. Back-end developers should be proficient in languages like Python, PHP, Ruby, or Java, and interestingly, JavaScript can also be used as a back-end language along with back-end languages like NodeJS, allowing you to execute JavaScript not only in the browser, but also in the back-end environment. In addition, there are frameworks such as NodeJS Express, Ruby on Rails, Python Flask/Django, which can speed up development using specific back-end technologies of your choice. The main job of these frameworks is simply to reduce the amount of repetitive work developers have to do.

To continue our analogy, at the back end, we have the kitchen, which is similar to our server, where we prepare and serve all the dishes. When the customer asks for a pizza, the order will be sent to the server, which should be able to send back what the customer ordered, which is the actual pizza.

And finally, the place where all the components are stored, of course, is the database, which is where all of our user data, event data, and all of the data that makes our site work. So this is where the division between the front end and the back end occurs. It is between the dining room and the kitchen and storage room in the dining room.

Back-end technologies such as Node.js and MongoDB enable us to interact with databases, have business logic on the server, and much more.

The backend contains the following:

  • The servers that will serve the files are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • A database that stores your user data as their login name and password.
  • You can create an application in which the business logic determines how the Web application works, for example, calculating things like airline fares or payments.

Suppose you want to book tickets to an event on a website, then enter a name and buy a ticket. This information now includes your name, the number of tickets purchased, and the database of the registration details (for example, email) site. You can use the database to imagine to live in a place of great good spreadsheet, and almost to save all the data you input into the spreadsheet, this means that when you return later, you can login to return to site, it will be able to retrieve from the database of all data associated with your account, in this case, It will retrieve your event ticket.

Finally, we also have what are called full-stack developers, which you can name as a combination of front-end and back-end development. Flexibility on both the front and back ends makes you more ambitious as a developer.

Thank you for reading, and I hope a basic understanding of this will help you choose the right path.