What Should You Choose: Front-End Development or Back-End Development?

Before you start your career in developing in any serious software company, you have to apply for a position of either a front-end developer or a back-end developer. For a beginner developer (which I assume you are, since you’re reading this article), this can be a tricky choice: while both job positions are lucrative, you have to choose your job prior to seeing if it sits well with you. This is the dilemma I was also faced with, so today I decided to share some of my opinions about it which I hope you will find helpful.

What is the role of a front-end developer and a back-end developer? How do they differ?

One of the first differences people notice about these job positions is in their title – one as we know has to deal with the front-end of the project one is working on, while the other has to deal with the back-end of the project.

· In layman terms, the front-end developer focuses on the part of the website / app / any project related to developing that others will interact with – that is to say, the front-end developer will focus on the theme a website / app / any other project has, its layout, menus and the whole style of the decided platform. As you can see, if you opt for this job position, your job will have to do a lot with the design of the platform of choice, but be wary – it’s not as simple as it sounds. People often forget that front-end developers also rely on programming languages, as usually any sort of a design is linked with Photoshop skills. What you will need to know (the foundations of, at least, if you’re a beginner) is HTML and JavaScript. More information about both of these programming languages can be found on my blog, but for the sake of keeping this article concise, I’ll let you know that both of these programming languages are very easy to learn and implementable from the very start.

· The back-end developer works on the same project but only at the different end; it is their job to create and monitor the source code, and keep everything around the desired platform working perfectly. People who opt for this job position will be in hold of the entire database (and the website’s servers) – and that is why they have to be extremely organized and have an amazing attention to detail. This job position calls for at least intermediate knowledge of programming languages as everything revolves around coding when it comes to back-end development. The programming languages that are often used with back-end development are C#, Python and JavaScript.

Does it mean that you can do both if you know JavaScript?

Definitely! Usually, beginners are advised to learn JavaScript so they can choose between these two job positions; many front-end developers end up being back-end developers!

Which job position is more lucrative?

This varies from company to company, but usually it is the back-end developer that is being paid a bit more as they have to work with the source code. But this is not to say that front-end development is an easy job – it’s far from it!

All in all, you have to take it all in consideration before applying for your job, as there is not a “better job position” between the two, unless you’re only choosing your job position based on the possible salary – then, I would advise you to opt for back-end development. However, if you can’t decide, practice both types of programming and see what you find more enjoyable. Good luck with it!