If you’ve had any contact with the IT industry, you must have heard of these two terms. What does Front-end do and what does Back-end do, and where do they overlap? Can they even be distinctly divided? What tools are used for each of them?

Briefly, Front-end is a term that refers to everything the client’s sees, such as web design, while Back-end represents the server side of things. This might seem simple, but there are crossovers between those two.

Front-end is everything the user sees, regardless if it’s a website or an application. Consequently, the Front-end developer is responsible for the whole visual appearance of an application or a website. Their job is to design and create the application appearance and link it with the corresponding code. The most common tools used include HTML, CSS and Java Script. These tools are used to create a static website for clients that don’t require additional options. Static websites as such are ideal for representing small companies, beauty salons, and others who wish only to neatly present information about themselves, their product or service.

Although, if the client’s requirements exceed the static application, the development process must also include Back-end development.

Back-end is the server side of things. It’s the part where the program that runs a web site or an application is created. Programmers that do the back-end part are supposed to take care of security, structure, data management and running dynamic sites or apps content. Dynamic sites include all web sites that work with databases, from blogs to web shops that contain databases of the goods, customers, orders, online shopping. In general, those are all the websites that can offer customers much more than information.

Furthermore, everything from the social media, we use every day, such as Facebook, Instagram, search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck Go, all the way to complex web based video games cannot be created without the back-end part. Some of the programming languages used in back-end include PHP, Python, C#, Java, and some more.

Other then back and front end, the is a Full Stack Developer. As the name suggests, this is a person that knows and does both front and backend part.

Hoping our text has helped clarify these terms, and possibly motivated you to pursue one of them.

Author: Milan Aljetić