Understanding the Differences Between Front-End and Back-End

With most forms of software development, there are two main parts, front-end development, and back-end development. These are most easily understood in web development, as their differences are most prominent then. To put it simply, front-end is the part we as users see and experience while back-end is the invisible part that controls the website behind the scenes. Without a strong back-end, the front-end of a website simply cannot work. Because of the overlap in how they work together, it can get a bit confusing so allow us to deep dive together and understand these two parts of development.

First, let us start with what we see, front-end.

In terms of a website, the front-end consists of literally everything you see. This means the design, layout, choice of text, how the pages navigate, and so much more are all done by front-end developers. There are different ways in which developers code all of these things in order to set up the front of a development project. Various coding languages allow for things such as drop-down menus, tables, popup windows, etc. The largest front-end languages are JavaScript, HyperText Markup Language (more commonly known as HTML), and Cascading Style Sheets (more commonly known as CSS).

However, these are not the only languages and often when building software, developers will use different coding languages for different things, allowing them to work together to create a unique layout. Each language has it’s own set of aspects that it does best, so when used in conjunction, one can create a perfect piece of complex software. Most often, people with careers as front-end developers have a background specifically in things like web design and even graphic design.

Now, let us go behind the scenes and take a look at back-end development.

Back-end development works with the server side of software. It is the creation of a website’s structure, allowing it to function and run as smoothly and easily as possible. Back-end development builds operations of websites, databases to store various sources of information, and application programming interface (also known as API). Just like with front-end development, there are different coding languages and tools that are used for different things. The most common languages and tools are Java, Python, Ruby, and SQL Server.