Front-end web development and back-end development: these two important parts of website-building represent different ‘philosophies,’ but they cannot exist without each other. So what are front-end and back-end web development, and in what way do they differ? Let’s see.
Front-end development vs back-end development: the key difference
What would be a good example for this? When you are driving a car, you are using the steering wheel and the dashboard to make it move in the right direction and do everything you want it to do. However, the things that give it the power to move, like the engine and the power system, are hidden inside.
This is like front-end and back-end development. Front-end or “client-side” development is focused on the website elements you see in your browser and directly interact with. Back-end or “server-side” development is responsible for the website’s overall functionality and deals with the things you cannot see, such as databases and servers.
Front-end development: always in the front line
To present the website information in the best way and provide the perfect interaction with the user, front-end developers use many helpful tools, the most important of which are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is responsible for presenting all the code to users in an understandable form. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) offers great opportunities in improving the style of the presented information (colors, backgrounds, glitter etc.). JavaScript makes user’s interactions with the website faster and more exciting with sliders, drop-down menus, infinite scrolling and much more.
A bunch of other tools and frameworks (SaaS, LESS, Bootstrap, jQuery, Angular, Ember etc.) are used with these “great three” to make the coding easier.
Back-end development: at the heart of your website
The “invisible engine” of your website, the back-end code, provides the necessary information from the background.
Back-end developers do their invisible magic by writing code using such popular programming languages as PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, .NET and others. When some operation needs to be performed, the back-end code interacts with the database (using MySQL, SQL, Microsoft Access etc.). After that, the required information is returned to the user in the form of front-end code.
Shopping online? Signing up for a newsletter? Editing a content page? Whatever you are trying to do, it’s the back-end code that is responsible for it. The information about all these operations is saved, updated, changed or deleted in the database.
To wrap up
So, both front-end and back-end are important for your website. Good development agencies can make both the “engine” and the “steering wheel” of your site work perfectly! Internetdevels website development services company has awesome front-end and back-end developers on the team. Just contact us and have an amazing drive! :)