Backend development is a crucial part of web development that involves creating and maintaining the logic, functionality and data of a website or a...
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Now imagine being a full stack.
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this comment recurring
Having transitioned to backend almost a decade ago, I kinda consider APIs for interactions with GUIs/(web)apps as frontends, while understanding systems to systems comm's as actual backend
e.g. the whole process that could be triggered by e.g. a purchase on a marketplace (stock management, logistics, payment gateways and processing, supply chain management / procurement, price & product updates, return management, all kinds of ERP processes or comm's between different ERPs even and all the included DBMSs, storage implementations etc.)
on top, everything you wrote =)
backend is so much more than what I thought 10 years ago.
Thanks for the feedback!
I'm sure it is
Now write me those endpoints! I want the endpoint to have this specific shape and speed and size get to it! Nothing else matters! 😎
P.S. Backend developers are generally paid more and and given more authority and power and have more job security than frontend developers. So there's nothing to worry about. If anything backend developers should splash a little frontend for the lean times (you aren't always going to work in a company with unlimited money). Of course in a large enough org with enough sense frontend is treated as high paying and specialized as well. It's a business cope to treat frontend as an afterthought due to insufficient budget not a technical rule.
Yeah, be a backend dev means more than write endpoints, in fact, contain a lot of task neccessary for make works properly the core of a web service.
Very good article Emanuele.
I think another important aspect in backend development is quality management with productivity tools like ReSharper and NDepend.
For me, the biggest challenge in backend development is business orientation:
And then, once you have learned about everything and you feel like "I can control a BE development". You need to start taking into account everything related to infrastructure management, deployments and cloud (servers) cost.
Building an API could be difficult, building an API keeping low latency and high availability without impacting the cloud bill in the long term is another challenge by itself and a BE eng must be accountable of everything from code to operate a service.
Another aspect that a backend development should consider is understanding monitoring and performance metrics
yes, good feedback.
Interesting, thank you
Great overview! I'm sharing this with my collegues. Another important and often overlooked skill for a BE dev is writing documentation, not only for the FE devs but also for other members of the team who might use your code later. It's incredible how much time you could save with a well-written documentation.
Yes, you are totally right and I agree with you!
I write APIs for work every day. Great article! You pretty much covered every single important part of the API design.
Thank you very much for the feedback!
I completely agree that backend development is much more than just writing endpoints for the frontend. As a backend developer, I am responsible for designing and implementing the core functionality of an application, handling data storage, security, performance optimization, and integrating various services. It's a crucial and complex aspect of the development process that plays a vital role in delivering a robust and reliable user experience.
i liked how it gave links to the recourses to learn the topic instead have have me find them. as a someone super new to this is a bookmark article for sure
thanks for the feedback. I will try to do it in the future as well.
This is great, thanks!
As a frontend guy wanting to transition to the backend, this was a really great overview and an interesting & enjoyable read.
Thank you for your time and effort, your post has brought more information about backend developer's job discretion.
This is helpful, thanks!
I would just add to the database section that for something more complex, the backend developers usually need to know several databases which may be very different.
In our case (localazy.com), we have PostgreSQL, MySQL (for some 3rd party tools), Redis (both in-memory and persistent instances), Elasticsearch, ...
And if you don't have dedicated ops, it's a challenge to keep it replicated. Not talking about the fact that each of the databases require some kind of maintenance over time and if you really build something with millions of transactions, you have to consider things like update strategy and vacuuming (PostgreSQL).
Also, storage is not that simple as well... There is S3 (and similar) but it needs a bit of planning if you don't want to overpay it, so you need to know how it works and how to use it and also the economics behind.
Anyway, great article nicely explaning that API is usually just a very thin layer on top of something really complex behind.
As well as frontend isn't just about changing button colors and moving them 1px back and forth. As a fullstack dev by calling I clearly understand the depths of both worlds and appreciate the amount of knowledge you supposed to have for even a small application. However, having chosen the frontend development career path, I've witnessed instances where people engage in unnecessary complexities to appear smarter, when in reality, all that was needed were a dozen endpoints for the frontend app. k8s? Migration from mongo to postgre? Dude, we are 3 months old startup, we will have 10 users at most per day if we're lucky. But to be fair, I've seen this on frontend side as well. People love to overcomplicate things so much, when in reality all you need is to keep everything as simple as possible.
What are your thoughts on companies trying to hire full stack developers? If you were hiring for your company would you prefer a backend dev and front-end dev or two full-stack devs? Thanks for the article :)
I'm getting the impression that pure backend developers are becoming an endangered species... This article is almost a defense for the role of backend developer 😁 much has changed from the days when backend devs looked down on frontend devs... Or not... Backend devs still look down on frontend devs, but now frontend devs are taking over their work.
404 on every link
Great read. The only thing I'll mention is that in my experience in large companies with large funding have dedicated devops and db management teams for managing servers and hosting environments.
Totally agree. But it's not so common :(
Thanks for the article! Some of the links are dead (especially the geeksforgeeks ones) - is it possible to replace those?
yes it is . I am learning backend now , glad i found this article. Thanks for sharing
Very insightful