So far, the development of front-end technology has been more than just the development of PC browser web pages. There is a popular term for forming the front end technology field, called the big front end. However, at least I personally haven’t seen a very good explanation of the big front end so far. However, here’s what I personally think is the best explanation of the big front end I’ve seen so far.

Head to the server

As we all know, a complete Web application should contain two parts: server side and client side. A lot of people think that the front-end programmer is more about developing the client side, but now it’s more common to see a part of the server side that requires the front-end programmer.

The front-end programmer is now involved in the View layer of the MVC architecture on the server, but this can lead to fragmentation of the server development. To solve this problem, a new Web application architecture has evolved.

This essentially splits the server into two parts, a traditional server and a split BFF. As a result of this evolution, the front-end programmer’s responsibilities have shifted from being the client side to the BFF and client side of the server.

What is BFF?

BFF is Backend For Frontend, which is a back-end development mode that provides front-end services. That is, server-side apis are designed with front-end considerations in mind, such as handling business logic directly on the server side, rendering HTML pages, merging interface requests and data caching, and so on.

Extend to the generic client

Beyond that, back to the client side. The front-end domain involved in the client has been expanded from a simple PC browser web page to a variety of terminal forms.

  • PC: Web applications and desktop applications
  • Mobile terminal: Web applications, APPS, small programs, etc

For example, the small program launched by each big super application, the first choice is the front-end technology stack for development. In other words, the development of various terminals at present mainly relies on the front-end technology stack.

Programmers in the future development, the future will mainly be divided into cloud, terminal and artificial intelligence three aspects of development, and front-end programmers are mainly responsible for terminal development.

Front to big front

To sum up, the development of the front-end technology field is now known as the big front end, which should actually add BFF and various terminals on the server side on the basis of the original PC side browser web application.

So, to make the transition from the front end to the big front end, the front end programmer needs to improve and expand in three ways:

  • BFF (middle layer) development
  • Pan-client development
  • The depth of traditional Web technology