[Day 6] Frontend vs. Backend

What you see vs. what you don't! [Skillcrush Bootcamp] DAY 6 [FRONTEND VS. BACKEND] --------------------------------------------------------------- You’ve made it all the way to Day 6 of the Skillcrush Email bootcamp, you are killing it! Remember last week when you were up to your eyeballs in this vs. that (Internet vs. the web, websites vs. web applications, etc)? Well, you’re back at it again today with Frontend vs. Backend. Up until now, all of the technology we have discussed has been frontend technology. Starting today, and for the rest of the bootcamp, you will be learning about the backend. These are not merely semantic distinctions, they actually have real world implications. Developers usually specialize in either frontend or backend technologies (not usually both) and many companies have frontend and backend teams, or even whole departments dedicated to either end! [Frontend vs. Backend] The frontend is the part of a web site that you can see and interact with, while the backend is all the rest. You know how the tip of an iceberg pokes out above the water, but they’re really hundreds of feet deep? That’s a lot like a web site. The parts you see and interact with on a web site – the buttons, the dropdown menus and big bold fonts – make up the frontend. The frontend of a web site has specific technologies attached to it. [HTML] makes up the text on the page, [CSS] makes it pretty, and [JavaScript] makes it interactive. All of these things happen in the browser. The backend is everything that happens before it gets to your browser. If you’re booking a flight, that’s where prices are checked, itineraries are booked, and credit cards are charged. A backend can be very simple or very complicated. A typical setup for a backend is a web server, an application and a [database]. The web server delivers a note to the application that you’d like to see all of the flights to Chicago. The application looks up the flights in the database, puts together a web page that lists them, and sends that web page back to your computer through the web server. That’s all the backend. Once your computer gets a hold of it, it’s the frontend. For technologies used in the backend, anything goes. If a database stores your name or flight info, it might be [MySQL], MongoDB, PostgreSQL, or many others. Web pages could be put together with [Python], [Ruby on Rails], or [PHP]. The web server that sends those pages over to your computer might be Apache, Nginx, or IIS. The list goes on and on! Because you don’t see the backend, programmers can swap out pieces of it without you ever knowing. For a while Twitter was powered by Ruby on Rails, but in 2011 switched over to Java. I’ll bet you didn’t notice! TOMORROW [Programming Languages] Programming Languages By Skillcrush There are literally hundreds of programming languages and all of them have a similar goal: to provide a way for humans to communicate with the machines. --------------------------------------------------------------- EARLIER THIS WEEK [CSS & JavaScript] CSS & JavaScript By Skillcrush HTML all on it’s own is pretty darn boring. CSS & JavaScript to the rescue! [Continue Reading →] --------------------------------------------------------------- You received this email because you are subscribed to the Newsletter List from Skillcrush. [unsubscribe from all lists] [update subscription preferences] Skillcrush 115 West 18th Street, Floor 2 New York NY 10011 USA