Web development is a specific field of software engineering that focuses on building web pages. Web pages, or web apps, are codebases that are downloaded and run in our web browser (e.g., Google Chrome and Firefox) each time a user navigates to the website address. We can also think of web development as being split into two main categories: front end and back end.
What is the front end?
Everything you have ever seen on the web is considered ‘front end’. The front end is what we see when we open a web page or app.
The front end is built out of three languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML allows us to put content on our page: text, headers, images, buttons, links, and etc. CSS is used to style our page. It allows the contents to have different text colors, background colors, as well as dealing with the positioning of the content on the page. JavaScript makes our page dynamic. It allows for the content to change on a mouse hover or click and also lets us submit data and have data rendered on our page (such as submitting a new blog post or having your feed populated when you open Facebook).
What is the back end?
Here is where all the foundation and functionality of the website are created. Back-end focuses on the logic of the site, creating servers, and working with databases and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
For example, the content and layout for a form would be created on the client-side (front end), but when the users submit their information it gets processed on the server-side (back end).
Web developers are usually divided into front-end devs, back-end devs, and full-stack devs. A front-end dev takes care of all the visual aspects of the website (layout, navigation bar, etc.), its interactivity, and binds together all its elements.
Back-end developers take care of less visible tasks that ensure the website runs smoothly, such as managing the website’s hosting services, database, and applications. Back-end devs might need to engineer solutions to server issues by using additional server-side languages such as Python, Ruby, Java, and PHP.
Full-stack devs are developers able to do both front-end and back-end tasks at the same time.
Recent Posts
THINGS TO CONSIDER WHILE CHOOSING A WEBSITE HOST
A web hosting service is a type of internet...
Read More
If you’re a brand today, there’s a 90% chance you’re on a social media platform. But how many brands have an active, thriving social media presence?
And how many of them are just sort of there? Reality...
Read More