There is always a big misconception with web developers and developers in general. I can not stop saying this enough. Now I bet you are wondering what is the difference between the two? A front end developer vs a back end developer? Well lets get started.

Front End Developer-Everything you see on the webpage in the browser, everything you can touch and see is what a front end developer is. Its all the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, and all those buttons, menus, sliders, scroll effects, everything on that is the front end.

Back End Developer-Back end is a wee little more complicated, cause its more focused around server side/ database development so like SQL, Ruby, Python. Its these frameworks/ coding languages that stores and process information from the server.

Think of it this way, when you buy something online through a store. The front end is what you see. But the process of buying the product is done by a Back End Developer.

Now there are also different kind of Front End Developers, there are people who specialize in Drupal, WordPress (like me), Joomla. Or even developers who specialize in certain other javascript frameworks such as Angular, node.js, and Grunt otherwise known as JavaScript Developers. This are all different special areas that many developers know, and not all of them act the same but they do overlap in some cases.

Now for the real crazy stuff, a back end developer builds the systems that store and run data. They will use some advance frameworks to get it all running, the key purpose of a back end developer is making sure the data store and accessible to a front end developer. A back end developer will work with a products “API” in order to help the front end developer get the information that is needed to display properly.

These days the lines between a front end and a back end developer is blurring and each person needs to know some what of what the other side does. This is very important to understand cause there will be times you will run into issues and it will make it easier to troubleshoot issues that arise. They will excel in their own field and definitely need to focus on their field due to the fact that everything is changing so fast.

One More Thing…

There is something known as a “Full Stack Developer“. Now what is a Full Stack Developer? Its simple, a developer that excels at both front and back end and can understand all kinds of different coding languages and how everything functions. These developers are very very few and far between and nowadays its getting tougher for people to be Full Stack Developers due to the ever changing landscape of the world. I learned at SXSW the few that I did meet say it is hard cause people believe that you are good at everything but they don’t excel at any single language since there are so many out there and everything keeps changing so fast.

With that being said I hope I did clear up some misconceptions about the difference between these two types of developers. Cause you can’t hire someone who specializes in one thing and expect them to do something else right off the bat. They will need to learn, cause a good developer will learn over a bad developer who won’t dabble in other areas of the web.

Now what do I excel at? WordPress, that involves PHP, HTML, CSS, javascript and SQL. As you can see there are 2 server side languages and 3 front end languages. I know how to trouble shoot sql issues if errors arise. Can I program my own SQL database? I have for data form collecting but I haven’t built a elaborate SQL data but I do understand what I need to look for when errors happen such as SQL injections.

I do know other languages but I am not a Full Stack Developer I don’t think of myself as a “Expert Developer” I consider myself a “Good Developer”, if I don’t use a coding language for a while I do have to go back and relearn things just to make sure things stick to the brain cause what happens when we don’t use a skill we have? We forget it. So somethings we all need to refresh our brains. Anyways this is enough for now. You take care and have a great weekend.

source: codeup
source: digital tutors