So in this three-part blog series, we're gonna discuss what front end developer is, what a back end developer is, and also the pros and cons of each. So part one, today's blog, is all about the front end developer; part two will be the back end developer, a future blog; in the blog after that one, we're gonna be talking about the pros and cons of each role and a little bit more information about how it would work and perhaps which one you should be focusing on. But let's start though, with the definition of a front end developer.
Welcome back. My name is Yenoj with another programming tip of the day. As I briefly mentioned, the three-part blog series. Today's blog is all about front end developer. So what is a front end developer? Well, that's a developer, a web developer, with a focus on what the user interacts with on a website. So they work with the web designer, but also they work with back end developers as well, and I'll talk more about it a little bit later. So the typical skills that afront end developer would need would be HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. So that would be sort of the three prerequisite skills you'd need. But there's soon to be other things like jQuery and so on and so forth, that you need to learn as well, lots of other things which I won't go into detail now. Now, see the web design adverse a web development blog that I did previously; click here, and that outlines more information on what general web developer skills should be aware of. So check that if you need to. So, getting back at the front end development though, they implement the web designer's user interface and basically get that working if you will. Now, that's basically the look and feel of the website, but also, they interact with the back end process, if there is one, for a website. And, to these days, all but the most trivial or basic websites usually have some form of backend or server process.
Now, some sort of data storage or whatever it is. So, to hopefully clarify this a little bit more, let's start considering an example of a website. So here you can see the LearnProgramming Academy's website; now, over to the right-hand side you can see that there are an image that looks, what's basically a box that you can click, there's a link that you can click; it's an image of a book; and, if you click on that, basically it will take you to another page. So, the front end developer that has implemented that website and then they've also added the functionality there so that, once the button is clicked, in this case, the little image button there, it takes you to another page; so, the front end developers basically added the code to do that; and that new page, if the user clicks a button on that page, they've added that functionality as well, and you can see that what pops up is a little box for the user to enter their email address; and, once they've done that, once they've clicked on the button, basically, the point, the information gets sent through the back end process on the server; and that then sends out the ebook. So, the saving of the email address and sending of the email with a link to the user's email, basically inbox if you will, to download the ebook, that's a back end process and that's created by the back end developer; whereas the front end developer, they're focused on the front end, they're focused on the buttons and so forth, the clicks so they open up a new page; and basically, they might have done is they've actually used the presses given to them by a back end developer and they can access that functionality. In this case, the functionality was for the back end process to accept that email address and then they take that email address away and they start processing.
So you can see where the front end developer's role has finished, is sending the information. They don't know the implementation details of what's happening in the back end: where they have the email, it's actually sent out to someone, how the email was put together and sent out to the user. Basically, what they'redoing, is they've implemented the functionality in this particular example; so go back to the first page: you've got the button on the screen there, I've clicked on that, it opens up the next page if you will, and then, after that, there another button to click that then pops up the form you can see there, the email address is typed in and then the button is clicked to download the ebook. So, after the download button is pressed, it's the front end developer's, basically their responsibility, that's what they've implemented, that they've to send that using a special code, a special API code if you will, or a way to access that functionality from the back end, they've used that to send the information through to the back end process on the server and that then, basically kicks off and does the rest.
So you can see how there are separate roles: there's the front end developer who's focusing on the look and feel, on what the user's interacting with the website; and there's the back end process, which we haven't seen in this example, with that accepts the email address and starts processing it. So, basically, there's a handoff process from the front end where it hands off the information that it's processed, in this case, is the email address, and sent that through to the back end; and that's the way it basically works. The front end developer and the back end developer might be the same, depending on whether you're part of a large team or whether you're working for yourself.
So I don't think you necessarily can't do both yourself, it is quite common in small development teams or even solo developers to have some skills both as a front end and back end developer. But, certainly, once you connect it to industry and start working with large teams, you'll see that the roles are often separated. So, they've got front end developers, who focus just on the front end, and they've got back end developers, who only focus on the back end; and then there's basically whatever they can talk and interact with each other in some way. All right, so hopefully that's gonna be a bit of an understanding of what a front end developer is. Tomorrow's blog, as mentioned, part two. We're gonna talk about the role of a back end developer; and then part three, the blog that's coming out after that, I'm gonna go through the pros and cons of both the front end and back end developer.
All righty, so I hope that helped. If you've got any questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll get back to you. If you're ready to look at the next tip click on here; and you can check that out. If you're interested in coding specific programming blogs click here. Consider subscribing by clicking on the link-up here and I'll see you soon!
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