Front-end and Back-end are two principal branches of full-stack development where you deal with developing web-based applications. Recently, I stumbled across a LinkedIn post from one of my connections which I thought was sort of a little disrespectful to frontend engineering. I decided to voice my opinion on the complexities of these two sections which fall under web development through this post.

While dealing with back-end technologies, engineers deal with mechanisms that handle data and perform various actions on it on servers that remain concealed from website visitors. We have several programming languages and frameworks available that are involved in back-end development. The most popular of these tools are Java, C#, PHP and Python. Concepts like caching data, multi-processing, and optimized searching are all concerned with back-end development. Back-end development is closely linked with cloud infrastructure and database management, though in many engineering departments, there is a separate team handling it. Some of the challenging aspects of back-end development are:-

1. Implementing caching mechanism for a large volume of data using tools like Redis.

2. Designing Monolithic or Microservice-based architecture depending on application requirements.

3. Implementation of complex search algorithms

4. The security mechanism for databases and performing optimized queries.

Frontend deals with stuff we see on the website like the like button you see on Instagram, images, buttons, forms and more. For the markup, we use simple HTML and CSS. On top of it, to inject some life into web pages we use Javascript. Sounds simple, right? Well, not so fast. Front-end has evolved a lot in the last decade. Even though, there is only Javascript involved there are quite a lot of frameworks and libraries available in it which certainly poses some challenges for developers while making a choice. Multiple Javascript frameworks exist because they do something better than others. To add to that, there are many CSS frameworks available that can be used in conjunction with the Javascript library you choose like React. The availability of these many options makes the selection choice difficult. Back in the good old days, we used to link external javascript to the dynamic webpages created using a suitable back-end language like PHP. Later, Jquery because very popular. So much, so that at one point in time, it had more questions on Stackoverflow than Javascript. But, in recent years we have made the transition towards the development of single-page applications (SPA). Popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, Angular or Svelte can be used to develop the front-end as SPA. These apps contain reusable components. Often we also need a centralized data store for these apps for which we use libraries like Redux. We can serve front-end code bundled as a static folder by using a popular asset bundler like Web-pack. This static folder generated gets served using the back-end framework by the server. There are also frameworks like Next JS (for React) and Nuxt JS (for Vue) for building SPA with better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and routing support. Challenges front-end developers often confront are:-

1. Designing component-based architecture for the front-end app in React/Vue/Angular. This involves identifying reusable components, choosing a UI kit, front-end routing, placing external styles, using CSS pre-processors and more.

1. Deciding which packages to use to achieve features like form validation, API integration and more.

2. Make the website responsive on multiple devices with different sizes.

3. Integration of SEO for single-page applications.

For small and medium sized applications, I often find front-end implementation more complex and time consuming. But, as the size of the application grows and you need complex algorithms to handle caching, parallel processing and related stuff, back-end complexity is enhanced. For instance writing a simple CRUD module is very simple for back-end and more complex on the front-end side. As your application grows in size and functionality you might need to apply complex optimization algorithms on the back-end. Back-end requires more expertise in general in data structure and algorithms.

My final verdict is that it depends on various factors like size of the app, feature requirements and more, but in general it can be argued that back-end is more complex. In terms of pay scale, back-end engineers are paid slightly more on average for the similar profile compared to their front-end counterparts at least in my country.

The post which I came across seemed to promote the narrative that Back-end engineering is significantly more skillful compared to front-end development to which I strongly disagree with. It might have been the case in the past, let's say ten years ago. But, these days as I covered above, front-end engineering is also very intensive in skill demand. Then, there are full-stack engineers like me who handle both. That is it for now, if you have anything to share on this topic, please fill free to fill the comment box.