Back in the days, when people started to make websites, there was just backend development.
Scripting languages like Perl or PHP would receive a request from a browser, gather data from a database, and render an HTML file they would send back to the browser.
Then came the rise of JavaScript, and people would build parts of such applications inside the browser. More and more work would end up on the browser side of things, and one day, people would talk about frontend work. Where you would gather data from the server via an HTTP API, and the server wouldn't have to bother with HTML rendering anymore.
From then on, people would talk about "frontend development" when they meant devs that would somehow create js/html/CSS code to build a user interface in a browser.
And people would talk about "backend development" for everything that happened on the server side of development. It could be PHP, Python, Go, Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Java, or whatever.
Now, " frontends " are also built on platforms other than the web, like mobile apps for Android and iOS or desktop apps written in languages like JavaScript. I put it in quotes because, technically, these are all frontends for something. Yet, when you apply for a job, they are usually called "mobile development" or "native development" or something.
You can often split a stack in front and backend, while neither of these parts is web related. Modern compilers, for example, have frontends and backends. For the code, they accept (C, Rust, etc.) and the binaries they emit (Linux, Windows, etc.).
It's a bit like with "API"; every interface you access programmatically is an "API" in some way, but most of the time, when you read API in a job description, they mean an HTTP-based API like REST or GraphQL.
They are both terms with historical baggage.
Back in the days, when people started to make websites, there was just backend development.
Scripting languages like Perl or PHP would receive a request from a browser, gather data from a database, and render an HTML file they would send back to the browser.
Then came the rise of JavaScript, and people would build parts of such applications inside the browser. More and more work would end up on the browser side of things, and one day, people would talk about frontend work. Where you would gather data from the server via an HTTP API, and the server wouldn't have to bother with HTML rendering anymore.
From then on, people would talk about "frontend development" when they meant devs that would somehow create js/html/CSS code to build a user interface in a browser.
And people would talk about "backend development" for everything that happened on the server side of development. It could be PHP, Python, Go, Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Java, or whatever.
Now, " frontends " are also built on platforms other than the web, like mobile apps for Android and iOS or desktop apps written in languages like JavaScript. I put it in quotes because, technically, these are all frontends for something. Yet, when you apply for a job, they are usually called "mobile development" or "native development" or something.
You can often split a stack in front and backend, while neither of these parts is web related. Modern compilers, for example, have frontends and backends. For the code, they accept (C, Rust, etc.) and the binaries they emit (Linux, Windows, etc.).
It's a bit like with "API"; every interface you access programmatically is an "API" in some way, but most of the time, when you read API in a job description, they mean an HTTP-based API like REST or GraphQL.
So, context is essential here.
good and shot explanation 👏👍🏽
Excellent summary.