Ever wonder what a full-stack developer or front-end developer or back-end developer do every day? Read on to find out!
You open a new browser tab, type in a URL(for example https://codenest.ng), and press enter. The site loads immediately. It nearly takes your breath away with its ultra-clean layout, well-constructed pages, and impressive looks and feels.
Do you know the people responsible for every part of that experience?
They are called Web developers.
The role of a web developer is one that almost always makes it to the lists of high-paying IT jobs. And why not? In today’s digital world, web developers are indispensable. Whether it’s a beautiful and sleek website, a high-performing e-commerce site, or any other web-based application, it’s the handiwork of a web developer
Truth be told, the web development field is expected to grow more than 30 percent in the next 10 years, and web developers will undoubtedly enjoy steady growth in demand for their expertise.
How do you know exactly what kind of web development work to seek out and train for? If you’ve poked around on job listing sites or browsed through coding schools, you’ve probably gathered that web development tends to break down into three main concentrations: front-end, back-end, and full stack.
Front-End Web Development
Now, let’s take a look at front-end web development. What is the role of a front-end developer and what are their daily programming tasks?
Front-end web developers take care of the website’s style and user interface. As you’d probably know, HTML is the structural skeleton of a webpage. You can think of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as the physique or the body of the skeleton. CSS enables front-end, web developers, to modify the shape of the physique, which, in terms of websites, is like pre-defining certain sections to make the website display a specific style.
Front-end developers are majorly responsible for a website’s user-facing code and the architecture of its immersive user experiences. In order to execute those objectives, front-end devs must be familiar with three main languages: HTML, CSS, and Javascript programming. In addition to fluency in these languages, front-end devs need to be familiar with frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, Backbone, AngularJS, VueJs, ReactJs, and EmberJS, which ensure great-looking content irrespective of the device.
A front-end dev is responsible for the interior design of a house that’s been built by a back-end dev.
Back-End Web Development
Though it’s essential to have a good-looking website, it’s also important to be able to fill our attractive website with good wholesome content. Now we begin to approach back-end web development.
So what makes the front end of a website possible? Where is all that data kept? This is where the back end comes in handy. The back end of a website consists of a server, an application, and a database. A back-end developer develops and maintains the technology that powers those components which, together, enable the user-facing side of the website to even exist in the first place.
Commonly used back-end web technologies are: Python, Ruby, and .NET. We’ll use .NET as our example here. C# (C-Sharp) is a programming language developed by Microsoft that runs on the. NET Framework. C# is used to develop web apps, desktop apps, mobile apps, games, and much more. A combination of C# and SQL (Structured Query Language, MySQL is a common example), which is our database, can be used to pull the information from our database and insert it into our HTML file. We can even change the data that’s being displayed or update it in our database.
Examples of this can be seen everywhere. Whenever you update your profile on LinkedIn, the information you submitted gets stored in the database, not the actual webpage itself. If you decide to update your profile, the updated information also gets pushed to the database. This seamless integration is what allows LinkedIn to load so quickly instead of having to display everyone’s’ information all the time.
Full-Stack Web Development
There’s really not so much a black-and-white distinction between front-end and back-end development. “Front-end developers often need to learn those additional back-end skills, and vice versa, especially in the current economy where marketing is thinly resourced,” said Matranga. “Developers need some of that cross-discipline. Oftentimes, you have to be a generalist.”
Full stack developers are jacks-of-all-trades.
Full-stack developer skills and expertise are relevant in all layers of the web development process, starting from the planning stage of projects, to managing databases, building user interfaces to data structuring, and solving mission-critical needs. Therefore, full-stack developers must understand all levels of a website and how the web works
In conclusion, learning multiple web languages and technologies is the best route to take. However, there is one approach that is good to keep in mind: learn the most widely used and popular technologies/languages, as the more support you have for your product, the better.
If you’re interested in getting started as a web developer check out our 6 months software development program!
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