Front End vs Back End Development: What’s the Difference?

Front end development and back end development are the 2 different types of web development. A front end developer will often focus heavily on understanding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript since these languages live in the browser. Web servers are computer programs that store, process and deliver web pages to the users. If you’re interested in front-end development, the Front-End Engineer Career Path is for you.

HTML is the structural backbone of a site, CSS is the custom skin that defines the style of the visuals, and JavaScript affects how elements on the page move around. Check out the following video and read on to find out more about how to get started with front end development. The following information compares front-end vs. back-end developers. Below, we describe key front-end developer skills and explain why they need these abilities. Get a hands-on introduction to web development and build your first website from scratch with our free, self-paced Web Development Short Course. So you decide to open an online store where people can shop and place orders anytime. This means your site will now have to store information about products, purchases, user profiles, credit cards, and more.

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Back-end developers need advanced experience in server-side programming languages like Java, Python, and Ruby to build applications. Students can learn or brush up on specific computer programming languages by completing bootcamps. For anyone who doesn’t work directly with web development, concepts like front-end vs. back-end development can be challenging to wrap your head around.

• XAMPP and WampServer are examples of open source windows development environments that allow users to use web applications with Apache, PHP, and MySQL database.
• This means your site will now have to store information about products, purchases, user profiles, credit cards, and more.
• There are a wide variety of frameworks and languages used to code the application, such as Ruby on Rails, Java, C++/C/C#, Python and PHP.

With additional training, education, or certifications, some back-end developers can translate their experience into higher-paying careers as software engineers. Below, we explain some skills that back-end developers usually possess. Most employers require back-end devs to hold bachelor’s degrees in computer science, programming, or web development. Some back-end devs can find employment without earning four-year degrees by learning through relevant work experience or bootcamps. If you like to spend your time solving business problems, writing algorithms, working in the cloud, and creating services and APIs, then backend development is for you. By now, the difference between the frontend and backend should be more evident, as well as the different activities carried by developers that work on both ends of the wire.

Questions About Types of Software Engineering

The back-end runs on the server side, while the front-end runs on the client side. A framework makes it easy on both the teams, as it reduces the coding and speeds up the process indefinitely. In short, front-end and back-end development are both needed to create a full-functioning website. “Front End” typically refers to the stuff that you actually see on the website in the browser (and is often called “client-side”). This covers how the content is presented including all the little user interface elements like menus and dropdowns and transitions and modals. Their versatility allows them to contribute to any stage of the software development cycle. One advantage of being a full-stack developer is that you’ll be able to recognize what makes a website intuitive and easy to use, as well as how to build it most effectively.

• If you’re keen to learn web development, but aren’t sure whether to go down the frontend or backend route, it’s important to consider the day-to-day tasks of each.
• Client-side rendered applications still rely on services and APIs that run on back-end remote servers or the cloud.
• Unlike UI UX Design, web development focuses more on coding and making sure a website functions well.
• It is the portion of software that does not come in direct contact with the users.
• Also called universal rendering, isomorphic rendering is a new technique used in modern web development.
• The front-end is the part of the website users can see and interact with such as the graphical user interface and the command line including the design, navigating menus, texts, images, videos, etc.

The purpose of web frameworks and frontend libraries is simply to make code more manageable and organized by providing various tools and templates compatible with common coding languages. Front-end developers design and construct the user experience elements on the web page or app including buttons, menus, pages, links, graphics and more. The front-end/back-end distinction can separate the parser section that deals with source code and the backend that generates code and optimizes. Some designs, such as GCC, offer choices between multiple frontends or backends .

Frontend and backend

Another way to understand the difference between the two is to understand the knowledge required of a front-end vs. a back-end software developer. Dynamic website to allow users to make purchases, use contact forms, and any other interactive activities you might participate in while browsing a site.

Full-stack developers work with all parts of a website and use front-end and back-end coding skills. Keep reading to learn more about front-end vs. back-end development, including key proficiencies required for both focuses. With client-side rendering, the rendering of the content happens in your computer instead of the remote web server using the de facto language of the web, JavaScript. In practical terms, it means that a server is only needed to serve the raw web application, and the browser will be in charge of rendering this application in its final form, HTML.

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Pile on all of the frameworks, programming languages, APIs, and libraries that front-end developers use to build apps, and it can get very confusing. When working on a new project, software developers build programs from the ground up. Most applications are powered by both front-end and back-end programming languages. Front-end development focuses on the user-facing side of a website. Front-end developers ensure that visitors can easily interact with and navigate sites by using programming languages, design skills, and other tools. They produce the drop-down menus, layouts, and designs for websites. While there are some similarities between the two sides of web development, it’s easiest to think of them as sides of a cassette tape.