Frontend vs Backend Software Development - Which should you learn?

[00:00] that you need to make, one that's going to affect the rest of your career, and that's whether you're going to be a frontend developer or backend developer. Which one's easier to do?

[00:15] So let's get started. Frontend and backend development they tend to suit two different types of people as well.

[00:28] To be able to do frontend development, you really need a good eye for design. but you're going to be working quite closely with designers and they're going to expect pixel perfect precision out of the UI.

[00:42] brain than a logical one. but because you're going to be working with the visual elements you need that sort of artistic view to make sure things look right,

[00:56] Frontend development tends to be a bit more customer focused, I mean it makes sense. So you need to make sure that the application is built to the requirements

[01:10] that they have, as well as making sure that it's user friendly to use. quite closely with the UX designers as user experience is really important. and therefore

[01:23] Need to make sure that anyone using your application to without getting annoyed by the popups or getting annoyed by the number of clicks they need to do to do a certain action.

[01:37] But again, if you haven't got a UX designer, that you really need for frontend development is being a quick learner. I can't say that React is still going to be around in ten years time.

[01:53] If you want to be working on new exciting applications, then you're going to need to know Of course, no one knows what's going to be the next React

[02:05] or the next Angular, so you really need to get used to learning, at least having a basic understanding of each of them, and then keeping up Of course, all that time you spend learning react isn't completely wasted

[02:20] and it should be quite easy to switch between them. to pick up all of these frameworks and not be left behind. development is the instant gratification you get out of doing it.

[02:34] open, one with your frontend application and the other one with your code That's something that I really enjoy about frontend development. Obviously you don't need the artistic abilities

[02:48] to think through the problems and solve them out in a logical order. development is more about performance, maintainability and scalability.

[03:03] It's going to be able to cope with the user requests Developers really need to think about edge cases when someone is using your application,

[03:19] is the application going to cope if the user enters in or zeroes Or what happens if the user enters in drop table for example? You need to make sure that every single scenario is catered for

[03:34] Really the job of a backend developers to make sure that your application is robust, you can cope with a large amount of users using it. It needs to stay stable, it needs to run.

[03:51] other than the fact that you don't want it to be slow, you want it to be fast. what you intended to do and it doesn't break in the process. what ifs. What if the user puts in rubbish data.

[04:08] What if the number of requests you get in scale by 100? you need to ask yourself when doing backend development.

[04:20] development, backend development doesn't have that instant gratification factor the satisfaction comes from being able to build out everything That's usually a bit of a miracle

[04:33] So when it comes to frontend development and backend development, which one is easier? To be fair that both pretty hard now for really had to pick one, Now before you go and have a go at me in the comments, hear me out.

[04:49] Obviously for frontend development you need to know things like HTML, CSS, And obviously you need to know and you need to be familiar with best practices on things like accessibility.

[05:07] But the hard thing about frontend development is that most of what you learn It's knowing about the intricacies of React and how to build applications in React, which isn't going to be much use

[05:21] Sure, the next framework might be similar, but you're going to have to relearn the fundamentals that you are learning aren't going to change.

[05:34] is pretty much still useful today. Whereas, for frontend development I was using Knockout JS ten years ago, which no one is using anymore. we do need to learn new frameworks quite regularly

[05:51] the fundamentals don't really change, but I would say there's a lot more So you obviously need to know things like how to build an API, authentication, caching. Backend development still uses libraries and frameworks like frontend

[06:06] as much of an impact on your code base as it does for frontend developers. It's not the whole application, it's literally just a few lines of code The fact that the fundamentals just stay the same makes learning backend

[06:22] but there's a lot more to learn, which in general makes it harder. consider to be backend development is always changing. Backend development is therefore everything else.

[06:38] Now obviously we do have roles like DevOps and database administrators just the backend developer doing all of those different roles. you obviously need to know how to build an API,

[06:52] make sure it does what you need it to do and make sure it's secure. You need to know CI pipelines, you need to know the infrastructure as well and how to make that infrastructure secure and scalable.

[07:08] microservices and how to build an event driven architecture. now is going to be useful in ten years time.

[07:20] The thing is, with backend development, a lot of what you're going to be learning It's very difficult to learn how to build a scalable application if you haven't got the traffic coming in to justify building it.

[07:34] You can't write a good query if you've only got 100 records in your database. It just doesn't work the same compared to one that's got a million records. on being a frontend developer or a backend developer.

[07:50] that a lot of developers care about is which one is going to pay more. both of the starting salaries for both positions is probably about the same. experience, backend developers generally get paid more.

[08:06] tends to accumulate and compound over time. So if you've got ten years experience, you actually have ten years experience

[08:19] ten years experience might only have five years experience of React. a master backend developer than it is to become a master front And as I mentioned before, the scope for a backend

[08:35] developer is a lot larger and therefore you are a lot more useful to the company And as a result, you can command a higher salary. If you're working for a backend focused API

[08:49] developers are going to get paid a bit more. that frontend developers get paid a lot more. for frontend and back and developers

[09:03] a lot more senior backend helpers than you do senior front end developers. A lot of this is because your experience compounds over time as a backend developer So when the review period comes around, you have a lot more to talk about

[09:20] and to justify that senior promotion. It's also a lot easier for back end developers to quantify how much of an impact they've had on the application. and the company. as generally a backend developer is focused on

[09:32] That is something that you can say in your review process to say, well, I've made this application ten times faster than it was before and therefore I'm saving the company this much money. For frontend development,

[09:44] and you're on a customer focused project, then you may be able to have one of the experiments they did was to change the color blue Obviously, if you're a front end developer and you've got the permission to be able

[10:00] to change things like the color of buttons and be able to measure what the click a big impact on the company For front end developers, especially those working with a team of designers,

[10:13] it's going to be difficult to justify the impact they've had on the company. is taking a designers work and making it into a React application. What you really need for higher salary is ownership of the application

[10:26] making sure that it sees the results, and then be able to tell your manager Developers do tend to get paid a lot more, but it's only

[10:38] For some, the scope of what they need to learn can be a bit too much, and it's not uncommon to see developers being stuck at that mid-level role for their entire career and never progressing to a senior developer.

[10:51] So given the skills that you need to have and the pay that you can expect, Now really, you need to pick the path that's going to use your skillset best. If you're more logical, then you might be better off as a backend developer.

[11:08] You essentially need to focus on trying to become an expert at whichever path you pick, and then the pay will come. As long as you enjoy what you're doing, that's what matters most, and you need to pick what is going to be best for you.

[11:21] and people tend to use this as an excuse not to learn lots of different things. you may decide that everything that's backend related is not your job. What, many people don't know is this expression is actually misquoted.

[11:38] The full saying is "A jack of all trades is a master of none, So becoming a master at something is great, If you take a brain surgeon, for example, you might think, well,

[11:53] but of course they've had to go through medical school to get that as well. before they become a master of brain surgery. In software development, however, you don't want to be a master of one.

[12:06] React master, what are you going to do when React isn't around anymore and People tend to downplay generalists, but it's actually a lot more useful to be good software development is about creating things.

[12:22] to be able to do this, you need to know lots of different areas of software development. what you've built, but knowing just front end isn't that useful.

[12:37] but doesn't actually do anything useful? if you're trying to build a user focused application. if it all it does is sit on your computer and therefore you need to know a bit

[12:54] about DevOps to be able to put your creation onto a server so it doesn't mean that you need to be an expert in all of these different areas. For me, I consider myself a backend developer, but I know enough

[13:08] about the front end development to build a UI that people will want to use. so people can actually use it without being on my computer. from an idea to a product that people can actually use than it is

[13:25] to be a master of one thing and not be able to create anything useful. It's actually very difficult So whether you pick front end development or back end development, it's worth

[13:39] learning about the other side and all the different areas of software development Whichever one you pick, make sure you have fun with it. Try a different skill and see how you get on.

[13:53] If you did, make sure to leave a comment down below and I get to subscribe.