Front-end VS Back-end-Web Development
If you are a developer, you are just learning to code and want to focus on web development, but you are confused as to which path to take. Is it front-end web or back-end web development, or have you started your own journey and are questioning whether you are on the right path? This will be a good article for you to read. In the beginning, it is important to have a good understanding of both front-end and back-end web development.
Introduction
Front-end development is often called client-side development, and it focuses on everything you see, experience, and interact with on a website or application.
On the other hand, we have back-end development, usually called server-side development, which will be more focused on functions, data, algorithms, etc.
Front-end development
Front-end web development is a practice of converting data into a graphical interface by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so that users can view and interact with the data.
-Wikipedia
Front-end development covers all the content on the website or application that you often see. 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. These technologies all enable us to design websites and allow interaction on the client side (ie, browser). In addition, there are front-end frameworks for CSS, such as Bootstrap, Foundation, Stylus, Semantic UI, Tailwind CSS, etc., which can speed up the workflow. React, Vue and Angular for JavaScript are tools used by developers to develop advanced web applications.
A good analogy for describing front-end development is like a restaurant. There is a restaurant, which is the main restaurant where customers sit. The service staff brings the menu, the customer reads, places an order, and then serves them food. This is the client. This is what the user sees in the browser. They can interact with the website using JavaScript and view the information displayed using HTML and CSS.
Enough talk about front-end development, now let us continue to talk about back-end development.
Back-end 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 run normally, including storing and organizing data, creating algorithms and complex logic to achieve a seamless experience on the front-end. The languages that back-end developers should be proficient in are Python, PHP, Ruby, or Java, and interestingly, JavaScript can also be used as a back-end language with back-end languages like NodeJS, allowing you to execute JavaScript not only in the browser , And in the back-end environment. In addition, there are frameworks such as NodeJS's Express, Ruby on Rails, Python's Flask/Django, and these frameworks can use the specific back-end technology of your choice to speed up development. The main job of these frameworks is to reduce the repetitive work that developers have to do.
Continuing our analogy, at the back end, we have a kitchen, which is similar to our server, which is where we prepare and serve all dishes. When a customer requests a pizza, the order will be sent to the server, and the server should be able to send back what the customer ordered. This is the actual pizza.
Finally, the place where all the components are stored is of course the database, which is the storage place for all our user data, event data and all the data that makes our website work. So this is where the division between the front end and the back end occurs. It is between the dining room of the restaurant and the kitchen and storage room.
Back-end technologies such as Node.js and MongoDB enable us to interact with the database, and have business logic and more other functions on the server.
The backend contains the following:
- The servers that will provide the files are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- A database that can store your user data as its login name and password.
- The application in which you create business logic determines how the web application works, for example, things like calculating flight prices or payments.
Suppose you want to book tickets for an event on the website, then enter the name and buy the tickets. Now the information includes your name, the number of tickets purchased, and the registration details (e.g. email) database of the website. You can think of these databases as huge, excellent spreadsheets that live somewhere, and save almost all the data you enter into these spreadsheets, which means that when you return later, you can log in to return to the website , It will be able to retrieve all the data associated with your account from its database, in which case it will retrieve your event ticket.
Finally, we also have so-called full-stack developers, you can use the name to indicate that it is a combination of front-end and back-end development. The flexibility of the front and back ends makes you more ambitious when you become a developer.
Thank you for reading, I hope that having a basic understanding of this will help you choose the right path.