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Discussion on: I'm a frontend developer. Or am I?

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itr13 profile image
Mikael Klages

I think it's a spectrum.

Though in the end, isn't it a little useless to split things into front-end and back-end? Isn't it more important what types of experiences you have?

For example, writing the backend of a game-engine may be very different from writing the backend of a webpage with data stored in a SQL-database, even though both may be classified as "back-end"

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simonhaisz profile image
simonhaisz

First reply nails it.

Like any generalization of a complex topic, trying to pigeonhole a software developer into one of two categories is going to fail pretty massively at being descriptive of what they actually do. Like they are two separate checkboxes that have nothing in common. The fact that if you ask 5 different people what the terms mean you will get 7 different answers, and that every 5 years those 7 answers change, means to me that the value of these two terms is less than zero.

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lynnewritescode profile image
Lynne Finnigan

Yeah agreed, when recruiting we should try and avoid pigeonholing people as much as possible. This is something for me to think about, in terms of trying to get across the experience required > the job title/tools used.

Dividing the two disciplines was something I didn't like, and was quick to change when I started haha.

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Lynne Finnigan

I agree about not splitting them, and I mostly think of myself as just a “developer” because like you said, I do some tasks that could be considered “backend”. However there are still different skill sets involved.