Difference between Front-End and Back-End Development

Difference between Front-End and Back-End Development

A robust web application is vital to bring functionality to the website in order to complete certain essential tasks. A web application is divided into two parts – the front end and the back end. 

While it is believed that web designers take care of the front end and web programmers the back end, knowledge of certain programming languages is required to ensure the complete package satisfies the business requirement.

Front-End Development

The front-end is everything involved with what the user sees, including design and some languages like HTML and CSS. Most of the web courses created at Digital-Tutors will be for the front-end and focused on design, but there are already a bunch of front-end specific courses available at Pluralsight as well. There are a lot of different jobs associated with the front-end. Keep in mind that a lot of these titles are subjective, and while front-end developer may mean something at one company, it can mean something completely different at another company. A common front-end job title is "web designer." A web designer, you guessed it, designs websites. The job title of web designer is pretty broad, though. A web designer could just be someone who designs the sites in a program like Photoshop or Fireworks and will never touch the code. But in another location, a web designer could do all the design comps in Photoshop, and then be responsible for creating all the HTML and CSS (and sometimes even JavaScript) to go along with it. A User Interface (UI) Designer is basically a visual designer and is generally focused on design. They're not usually involved in the implementation of the design, but they might know light HTML and CSS so they can communicate their ideas more effectively to the developers. User Experience (UX) designers work in the front-end and study and researches how people use the sites and make changes through a lot of testing. A front-end designer or developer can create a site without any back-end development. The sites they would create without a web developer, or using the back-end, is a static site. A static site is something like a site for a restaurant or hair salon. It doesn't require any information to be stored in a database. The pages will almost always stay the same, unless it's time for a redesign. A front-end developer may be required to have a grasp on testing, as well as be well versed in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This person may or may not have experience with creating the design in a design program. A different version of this title is front-end engineer. Specific front-end languages like "JavaScript developer" are also considered front-end developers.   [caption id="attachment_27350" align="alignnone" width="800"]
There is a particular set of technical skills, tools and knowledge base required for front end development, whether your business is implementing this in-house or outsourcing it to an experienced web development company. Some of these are explained below:

HTML:

HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML describes the structure of Web pages using markup
HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages
HTML elements are represented by tags
HTML tags label pieces of content such as "heading", "paragraph", "table", and so on

Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page
HTML and its latest version HTML5 are widely held as the de facto industry standard for creating webpages.

CSS:

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) complements HTML by providing the styling required for an attractive interface. It offers various stylizing options, such as fancy fonts, buttons, flash lights, and templates. CSS is required for the effective presentation of the webpage.

JavaScript:

It is a dynamic programming language that is used to add interactivity to web pages. JavaScript makes possible the integration of multimedia on the web page or the app page and features, such as drag-and-drop, polls and quizzes, and video scrolling.

Along with the above-mentioned three programming tools, knowledge of APIs, js libraries, touch computer interface, social networking, and micro blogging are also essential.

Back-End Development

The back-end, or the "server-side", is basically how the site works, updates and changes. This refers to everything the user can't see in the browser, like databases and servers. Usually people who work on the back-end are called programmers or developers. Back-end developers are mostly worried about things like security, structure and content management.  They usually know and can use languages like HTML and CSS, but that's definitely not their focus. Back-end developers, or at least back-end development, is required to create a dynamic site. A dynamic site is a site that's constantly changing and updated in real-time. Most sites are dynamic sites, as opposed to static sites.  Facebook, Google Maps and this blog are all considered dynamic sites. Blogs are dynamic sites, since their content is constantly changing and updating. A dynamic site requires a database to work properly.  All  information, like user profiles or  images they've uploaded, or blog posts, are stored in the database. Web developers work with programming languages like PHP or .Net, since they need to work with something the database understands. The code they write communicates with the server and then tells the browser what to use from the database.

The following programming languages and frameworks are used, mostly individually, to create a robust back end:

Ruby on Rails (RoR):

Ruby on Rails is a web development framework, designed to ease the effort involved in coding through simpler syntax grammar. This Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework employs Ruby as the programming language. It can be implemented on most web servers and is compatible with popular databases.

Python:

Much like Ruby, Python is a programming language which is widely used for its readability and syntax. It provides ease of use for programming, particularly when employed in tandem with the web development framework Django. It is a portable language, which means that it can utilized for requirements across platforms.

PHP:

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a popular server-side script language and interpreter. It can be embedded into HTML – when the code is run on the server, HTML is generated which is sent to the user.  PHP offers a number of utilitarian features, such as scalability, ease of deployment and simplified coding.

SQL:

Structured Query Language (SQL) is the standard language for relational database management systems. It is used to interact with the database that is a part of the back end. Statements written in SQL are employed to accomplish tasks related to updating or retrieval of data.

Java:

Java Enterprise Edition is considered to still hold its ground for large web applications that require reliability, scalability and stability. Knowledge of Java is required for websites that are high-security (such as for those used in banking and insurance) or generate high traffic.

ASP.NET:

Active Server Pages.NET, or ASP.NET, is a programming language used to design web pages, and is developed by Microsoft. A part of the .NET framework, ASP.NET facilitates the building of dynamic websites and applications by leveraging compiled languages such as VB and C#.

In conclusion

Hopefully by now you've got a little better of a grasp on the differences between the front-end and back-end in the web industry. It can be a confusing topic, especially since there's not really an industry standard for what's always in the front-end and what's always in the back-end. However, there are also a lot of people who work in and understand both the front-end and back-end. Those people are often called "full stack developers". If you're still a little confused about the difference between the front-end and back-end, always remember that the front-end is related to the browser and everything sent to it. If it's got something to do with a database, then it's back-end related. Check out Pluralsight's Front-End Web Development: Get Started course if you're looking to delve a little deeper into front-end languages, especially if you're already comfortable or familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.