Web Development Specializations: Front End, Backend and Full Stack Development.
The website development is simply referred to as any work involved in the development of a website for a private network (also known as an intranet) or the internet (also known as the World Wide Web).
The process of web development has a broad scope and can range from a simple web page of plain text to complex web-based social network services, internet applications or web applications and electronic businesses.
There are many branches or disciplines that fall under web development, and they include web design, client liaison, web server, and network security configuration, web engineering, e-commerce development, web content development, and client-side/server-side scripting.
Important Thing About Web Development
The web professionals often refer to web development as the aspects of creating websites that do not involve design, these aspects include coding and writing markup.
During web development, many web developers often use a content management system (commonly known as CMS) to make contents change easier and available for people with basic technical skills.
In most huge corporations and businesses, web developers often work in teams that can contain hundreds of people that are skilled web developers.
These corporations and businesses often follow standard methods like the Agile methodologies for developing websites.
However, small corporations often hire one permanent or contracting developer or assign secondary assignments to the related job positions like a graphic designer or information systems technician.
Some corporations often assign more than one department to develop websites through collaborative efforts.
Specializations of Web Development
There are three known specializations of web development and they include:
1- Front End Development
Front-end development is also commonly known as the client side development and it is the aspect of web development that deals with the conversion of data to the graphical interface for users to view and interact through the practice of producing HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JavaScript.
This practice can be used to develop websites or web applications that users will be able to view and interact with directly.
One of the reasons why many people find front-end development challenging to learn or use is because of the fact that the techniques and tools that are often used to develop the front end of a website change constantly, so web developers need to be up to date in the evolution of the field.
Front-end development enables users to view the information on a website in a format that they can easily read and understand whenever they visit the website.
Another popular challenge often faced by web developers when they are developing the front end of a website is the fact that users often use different devices with different screen sizes and resolutions to visit a website.
This often forces front-end developers to take these factors into consideration when they are developing a website.
This is important in order to make sure that the website developed appears correctly in different browsers, different operating systems, and different devices.
2- Back End Development
Back-end development is said to be the server side of web development that enables web developers to focus all their attention on how the website works.
The back end development is said to often include three components; an application, a database, and a server.
The back end development enables web developers to write programs that will communicate the database information to the browser.
The work of back-end development cannot often be seen like that of the front end on the web page.
The back end development is the aspect of web development that is responsible for things like performance, database interactions, business logic, and calculations.
Unlike the front end development code that is run on the client machine, the back-end development code is run on the server machine.
The back end development is responsible for the performance of websites and web applications.
The programming languages often used for back-end development include PHP, Ruby, Python, and .NET.
3- Full Stack Development
Full stack development is used to refer to the practice of engaging in both front end and back end of a website.
This will require the web developers to have a great understanding of programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby and more back-end languages.
Full stack developers are simply web developers that have knowledge about both front end and back end development and can use it to develop websites and web applications.
Tools Required For Front End Development
There are many tools and platforms available to web developers for front-end web development.
Examples of these platforms include Magento and WordPress. And examples of these tools include:
- HTML: HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and it is the language which all code in a web application is eventually converted to.
It is said to be the only language that all web browsers understand and use to show information to users.
Therefore, very essential that every web developer that wants to develop the front end of a website should have a deep understanding of the programming language. - CSS: Although HTML is mainly plain text, it is capable of providing basic style options.
But if a web developer intends to develop a good front end, he or she will require a great understanding of CSS.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and it enables web developers to control a certain aspect of a website like templates, paint, buttons, lights, tassel, glitter and many other things that can be used to improve the style of a web page. - JavaScript: JavaScript is considered to be one of the best programming languages available, so if you intend to master one programming language alone, then JavaScript is one of your best options.
Although JavaScript is not just used to develop the front end of a website, it is one of the aspects that it is mostly used.
JavaScript is said to be a programming language that runs on a client machine, that is, the user’s computer.
This is one of the reasons why JavaScript enables web developers to program fast, intuitive and fun user experiences without having to force the user to reload the web page to get new updates to the web page.
JavaScript enables web developers to program videos that come to life, Drag and drop and infinite scroll on a web page.