Front-end and back-end. Interaction in plain words

If you are interested in developing web projects, you have definitely came across such terms as “front-end” and “back-end”. While IT specialists are familiar with the concepts, they can be completely unclear to customers. But it is important to have a general idea of them for project development to be comfortable.

In this article, we will simply tell you what the front-end and back-end are and what is the difference between them.

Front-end and back-end: what is the difference?

Let us start with the definition of the concepts. The behavior of any resource is based on its client-server interaction. All web project’s files are hosted on a remote server, which can even be located in the other corner of the world. Everything that is located and working on that server – code, scripts, other files – is the back-end.

When a user enters a website address in a browser (client software), a corresponding request is sent to the server, then some content is displayed on the screen in response. This is the front-end.

A back-end developer is responsible for developing the server side of a website, this “invisible engine”. Different programming languages such as PHP, Ruby, ASP.NET, Java, Node.JS can be used to write a code. The specific language is chosen depending on the technical requirements of a project and capabilities of a team and customer.

A front-end developer’s job is to create the client side of a website. This visual part has to look good, be user-friendly, be mobile responsive and displayed equally well using different browsers. HTML, CSS, Java Script – all this is the front-end. A number of other elements and frameworks (Bootstrap, jQuery, Angular, Ember, etc.) are used together with this “big three” in order to greatly facilitate the development.

Such a division is made for ease of development, although both of these directions are part of a whole, and they cannot fully exist without each other.

Boundaries are gradually blurred

In the modern context, the implementation of many computational tasks can be moved between the front-end and back-end, which gradually blurs the boundaries between them. You can do so that the calculations are made both on the server and client side.

Of course, each of these options has pros and cons. But in any case, it is good that there is something to choose from, because it gives greater flexibility in the development process.

I hope you have gained more insight into what the back-end and front-end are. Of course, a customer does not need to know all the nuances at the developer level. It is enough to have an idea of how it works to make communication with coders that will do the work more comfortable and tasks more realistic.

Professionals know how to make both of these constituents work together perfectly. Just write to us and we will help you organize an exciting start of your project 🙂