Front End VS. Back End
A lot of people get Front End and Back End development confused and I used to be one of them. That was until I came up with the following visual to explain the difference between them – and yes, I made a video to make it even more visual for you. You’re welcome <3
Front End development is concerned with anything that the final user interacts with – with the user interface. That includes the design of the website or application, it’s interactivity and so on.
Front End languages typically include HTML (the building blocks of what you want to have on the page), CSS (styling how things look) and JavaScript (making things interactive).
Back End development is whatever goes on behind the scenes: is there information pulled out from a database? Is there some data processing going on in the background? This one highly depends on the functionality of the particular application or program.
Programming languages for this one can really vary on what functionalities you’re trying to achieve, as some languages are better for some things, while others are better at other things. Apologies for being super vague here, I’m not ready to jump into the specifics yet, but I’ll write a separate post on that! Or even make a video 😉
But back to Front end vs Back end! Let’s use my visual from the video to make them more relatable. Think of them this way:
Your Front End is building/styling your appearance, for example, your choice of clothing, how you do your hair, make-up, etc.
And your Back End is making sure that you are functioning well and are healthy so, for example, doing exercise, checking up with a doctor or reading to get a broader database of information 😉
As you can see my Front End stack in this picture includes a lipstick and a huge blue necklace
Use that visual next time you think of an application: it’s Front End is how it looks and it’s Back End is how it functions & runs smoothly.
What did you think of that explanation? And how would YOU visualise that?
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