It is common for people to get confused when they hear the terms Front-end Developer vs Back-end Developer vs Full-stack Developer. I’m sure you’re one of them too, which is why you’re reading this. Well, the reason behind this confusion is the similarity in the names of these terms. But in this article, we’re going to discuss all of these terms in detail. We’ll also discuss what is the key difference between them, so you do not get confused the next time you hear any one of these terms. Let’s get started!

What is Front-end Development?

The term front-end development is used in software or website development to explain the visible portion of the application. It is sometimes also called client-side development. You can simply think of it as a user interface with which a user interacts when they visit the application. This portion is built by a developer or a group of developers referred to as front-end developers.

A front-end developer is responsible for developing everything with which the user will interact when they visit the application. Everything starting from application speed to the user interface and website design comes under the responsibility of the front-end developer. Front-end developers use different programming languages and frameworks to build the client side of a web application. Let’s talk about what are the programming languages and frameworks used in building the front end or client side of the application.

HTML:

Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, is the most basic programming language that is used to create the structure of a web page. As its name suggests, it consists of two components; Hypertext and Markup language. The hypertext establishes a connection between the two or more web pages. Web pages are structured using a markup language, which encapsulates text information within tags.

CSS:

Cascading Style Sheet also known as CSS is the designing language that is used with HTML to make the web page look more stylish. To style a website in HTML, the developers had to add code for each page in each page separately. To solve this problem CSS was created. Multiple web pages can be laid out simultaneously using CSS.

ReactJS:

ReactJS is a component-based JavaScript library created by Facebook. It is an open-source library that is available free of cost for anyone and everyone to use. ReactJS is primarily used for developing User Interfaces that enhance the app performance. JavaScript objects are used as virtual DOMs in this library, which improves the speed. As the virtual DOM of JavaScript is much faster as compared to the regular DOM.

JavaScript:

JavaScript is a very lightweight scripting programming language used with HTML to enhance the user experience of a web application. It allows the developers to add multimedia and animated images to the website that is not possible using HTML.

AngularJS:

AngularJS is an open-source framework built with JavaScript. It is used to change a static HTML website to dynamic HTML. This framework allows developers to use HTML as a template language for expressing the application’s components and to extend the syntax of HTML to express them clearly and concisely.

JQuery:

JQuery is a small JavaScript library designed to simplify the front-end scripting of the HTML site. It helps the developer to add features like animation and event handling using JavaScript to a web page. Also, jQuery simplifies the interaction between JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM).

Bootstrap:

Bootstrap is one of the most famous frameworks for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is an open-source framework used to make websites and web applications responsive. Since this is an open-source framework, anyone can use and change it according to their needs.

What is Back-end Development?

In the web development industry, back-end development is the portion of a website that is invisible to the user. It includes the logical structure, database, and APIs of the web application. Back-end development is also known as server-side development. This is the most significant element of a web application. This is because it defines how and where the data will be stored and which functions will be performed by the website.

A programmer or a team of programmers known as back-end developers are responsible for performing all these tasks. They are responsible for enabling the website’s user-facing functionality by building and maintaining the technology that powers the website’s components. The back end is also built using a programming language or framework. Let’s talk about some of these programming languages and frameworks one by one.

Node.js:

Node.js is a cross-platform program designed to execute JavaScript code outside of the browser. It is not a programming language or a framework. Node.js is used in backend development to build APIs for web and mobile apps.

PHP:

Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP is a free open-source back-end development scripting language. It was specifically designed for web development. It generates dynamic content for web pages.

Golang:

Go or Golang is an open-source programming language developed by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson at Google. It is also called a mixture of C++ and Python because it is designed with the top security and performance features of C++ and the simplicity and speed of Python. Nowadays, Golang has become very popular among developers and is widely used to develop the backend of a large-scale project.

Java:

Java is one of the most popular object-oriented programming languages designed to develop web and mobile applications. It is the most widely used programming language. Java is easy to learn and its code is reusable.

Python:

Python is a dynamically-typed high-level programming language. It is a very powerful object-oriented language that is used to develop web applications, mobile applications, and games. Python developers are in high demand nowadays. Most companies hire python developers full-time.

SQL:

Structured Query Language, also known as SQL is a database language used to manage the data in a relational database. It helps to store, manipulate and retrieve data from the database. It is used in backend development to manage the database.

What is Full Stack Development?

We discussed front-end development and back-end development in detail, right? What if I told you that full-stack development is a combination of both front-end and back-end development? Yes, it is true. A full stack developer is a person who has a strong command of both the front-end and back-end languages and frameworks.

Now, you must be confused as to why there is a need to learn all of these languages and frameworks. Well, in these economic conditions, companies expect their developers to be skilled in both front-end and back-end languages so that they can cross-functionally work in any of the teams according to their needs. Most companies hire a full stack developer instead of hiring a front-end and a back-end developer separately. Some small companies hire freelance full stack developers on a project basis. Because of that, full-stack developers are in high demand nowadays and they earn more than a front-end or back-end developer.

Conclusion:

In this article, we discussed the difference between front-end developer vs back-end developer vs full-stack developers in detail. To sum up everything, front-end developers built the visible part of the web, back-end developers built the server-side, while full stack developers are those who perform both of these tasks combined.