The front-end and back-end of web development offer different challenges and opportunities. Which one do you find more compelling, and why? Let's chat about it in the comments!
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Oldest comments (31)
Backend for ever, at least until I can get over my fear of CSS.
Tried Tailwindcss yet? I started Frontend with it and could never imagine writing a "normal" css file. 😅
Actually yes. So straightforward for CSS that it felt like cheating. I'll still colorblind and stuff though
Backend for life. I'm really not good in designing so I just sticked with the backend development.
Front-end fanatic forever! (try to come up with a better alliteration, back-end boys!)
I have been doing Front-end for more than half of my life and I'm not exactly young anymore.
How about being just a good coder and do whatever the job needs?
That's not exactly how this works. You can be an awesome front-end dev, master all the React hooks etc. But when the job requires you to program a micro-controller in ASM, you would probably be quite clueless, not to mention writing a good maintainable code. It's just too different from what you usually do.
And it can be very different between FE and BE too.
When I started there was no distinction between frontend and backend. Fullstack was simply the norm. Sure there are specialisations especially in the amount of abstraction. Sure it's harder from higher level languages down towards the machine itself, but this is universal. Solid fundamentals will allow you to pick up most things fairly quickly.
I don't know when this was, but isn't the reason that things were infinitely simpler back then?
When I started there was no backend or frontend, but also fullstack was not a norm. There was a "web developer". Everything was server-rendered, with maybe some JS sprinkled on top. Frontend did not exist as a thing, hence there was no notion of fullstack. These are all contemporary terms, an anachronism if you will.
Today both stacks have a lot of complexity and perhaps there are some people that have an equally great grasp of both, but it's a rarity. Usually we all are T-shaped engineers with clearly distinctive specialization in one area over the other.
Honestly, I think things are way easier now. But this is exactly part of the problem: Making it easier added a lot of abstraction and thus people don't even learn the fundamentals anymore.
As we all know, simple is not the same as easy ;) Yes, things are easier now, because complexity is hidden and abstracted away. But it's still there and tends to bite in the most unexpected moments.
Back-/ and front-end together. But with frontend it's just really rewarding to see what you build. I do however get caught thinking about design too long.
I started my career in backend development, but now I work on both professionally and as a hobby.
I like backend > frontend
backend by day, frontend by night!
I dream of Backend and Full Stack, but for the time being, due to pay and experience, Frontend it is!
Back end for the most part, at least for my actual job, and I have fewer arguments over how things "should" be done with other back-enders.
Front-end can be fun, though; it's nice to have something you can show product stakeholders beyond a little green tick.
I never planned to work with either when I was a kid. I planned for a career in advertising. Then the www happened, and it was so much more exciting than print - and I was hooked.
For about half my life I've worked both front end and some full-stack. And I like both front and back end. Though I do find the psychology in creating good user experiences more fascinating than optimizing back end for clock speed.