eli5 What is the difference between “Front End” developers and “Back End” developers?
In: Technology
A typical web service is composed of two parts.
The frontend is what you (the user) sees. Frontend covers things things like the structure of the webpage, accessibility, styling, functionality, user experience, fetching and displaying data, stuff like that.
While the frontend fetches and displays data, the backend is the actual storage of the data. Backend covers things like database mangement, server stability and security, scalability and APIs.
In order to have a functional webpage, the backend and frontend need to communicate with each other. This is typically done through an API.
Lets use reddit as an example. When you load a reddit post, reddit’s frontend sends a web request to an API endpoint. The backend then validates this request (makes sure you have the permission to view such data and that it’s actually you requesting it) and sends the appropriate data back to the client (the comment text, the user who posted the comment, timestamps, upvote/downvote data, awards, etc…). The client then parses this data from the server and decides how it will be displayed it to you.
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