Frontend vs Backend
The two most frequently used terms in web development or any software development are frontend and backend.
What is Frontend?
The frontend of a website refers to the area where users interact directly. We, as developers, generally call the client side as the frontend. It covers everything that users see and interact with immediately, such as button colors, text styles, photos, graphs, and tables.
When any normal user clicks any website or any application, whether it is an android app or iOS app, the content he sees on the screen is designed and developed by frontend developers.
Also, the frameworks and the functionality of the website are designed by front-end developers.
To be considered a great website or app, it should be responsive and it should have fast performance. The website's developer must make sure that it is responsive, meaning that it displays properly on all types of devices and shouldn't act strangely depending on the size of the screen.
And it should fetch data and deliver it to the client as fast as possible to increase the performance.
For front-end web development, three languages are used: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language is the meaning of HTML. With the help of HTML, developers create the layout or the structure of the front-end page. We can call it the skeleton of the frontend page. Hypertext means basically the links between two or more web pages or web applications. Tags are used in HTML, and there is a prewritten meaning for every tag.
CSS
A simple language created with the goal of making the process of making web pages attractive easier is called CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. Using CSS, we can create different kinds of styles and designs like colors or animations or font family etc.
There are three ways to use CSS in HTML files:
- External CSS
- Internal CSS
- Inline CSS
JavaScript
JavaScript works as the brain for the skeleton created by HTML. It makes the page interactive so that users can interact according to him. It is used to improve a website's functionality so that enjoyable games and web-based applications can run on it. JavaScript is nowadays used in the backend as well as frontend due to its amazing features.
In programming, a framework is a collection of tools used to create well-organized, dependable programs and systems.
For frontend development, these are some famous frameworks used:
- ReactJS
- AngularJS
- jQuery
- Flutter
- SASS etc.
What is Backend?
Backend means the hidden part of the website or application that deals with the server. It also makes sure that everything on the frontend side is working properly, and it stores and manages the data from the server and database also. It is the portion of the website that you are unable to view and use. Users can't deal with this part directly. If any user wants to use the functionality of the backend, then he has to deal with the frontend because there is no way to deal with the backend directly. The backend also includes tasks like writing APIs, building libraries, and interacting with system elements with no user interfaces or even systems of scientific programming.
Programming languages that are used as a backend for a website or an application:
Java
One of the popular languages used by companies in development is JAVA. It can scale up very well. Generally, we use it to write the backend of android apps.
Python
The python programming language is used where we need quick actions and string system integration. There are a lot of inbuilt libraries available in python by which we can create huge applications and use them in the backend.
PHP
The server-side scripting language PHP was created primarily for building websites. As a server-side programming language, PHP is known. And the reason is that PHP code is executed on the server. It stands for “Hypertext Preprocessor”.
Node.js
JavaScript code can be run outside of a browser using the open-source, cross-platform runtime environment known as Node.js. Node.js is not any kind of programming language. The majority of people is perplexed and realizes it's a computer language or framework. For creating back-end services like APIs for web apps or mobile apps, we frequently employ Node.js. Many big companies use this tech in their production.
C++
If you are a developer, then you will definitely know the C++ language because many programming competitions and problem-solving in Data structures are done in C++. In addition, it serves as a backend language. It is a low-level language so that it can interact with servers and systems more closely. That is the reason it is popular in backend development.
Some of the frameworks used in backend development are as follows:
- Express.JS
- Django
- Spring
- Ruby on Rails etc.