What's up guys the question is should you learn front-end or back-end development, first I'm going to compare frontend vs backend in five different categories and see which comes out on top. If you're a developer just learning to code, or you've already started, and you're questioning whether you're on the right path. This might be a good guide for you to read.
First of all my name is Usman I'm a WordPress Developer from Pakistan. If you're interested in topics like this, consider following me on my different social media like LinkedIn because I'm going to be releasing a lot more guides and articles also a disclaimer a lot of what I'm gonna explain in this guide is my opinion, but I try to bring in facts wherever possible. You can find my social links below at the end of the article.
First Category: Getting Competent
When you compare front end versus back end which is easier to get to a level where you're dangerous or able to do a job but not necessarily a master yet keep in mind getting competent is one of the most important areas because if it's too difficult you have a higher chance of giving up. So, comparing front end versus backend, let's look at front end first. Frontend has a lot of things going for it. A lot of what you do in frontend is very visual, so you make a change and save your file, and then you automatically see it update on the screen.
If you don't have a background in a technical discipline that's focused on logic and rational thinking, then frontend might be the natural choice for you because it lends itself more to what you see is what you get. On the backend, it takes time to build mental abstractions for things like databases, APIs, cloud servers, and you don't really have a visual reference to conceptualize all that. You have to kind of build this muscle of abstraction over time with spaced repetition and just a lot of exposure to these kinds of concepts and systems.
That being said, if you have a background in another engineering discipline, math, or anything like that, you might have an easier time picking these up. Personally, I did not, so I went with front-end first, and I'm glad I was able to get competent relatively fast doing that. Considering what we said at first about this point where if you get too frustrated you're more likely to quit, I'm gonna give this point to frontend because for most people you're not gonna have a technical background, and it's just going to be a faster, more responsive path, meaning you can see your progress very clearly when you're working on frontend. So competence goes to the frontend.
Point Number Two: Mastery
So once you've gotten competent in either front end or back end, you still have a long way to go before you are considered, let's say, a full engineer. In terms of frontend, you have a ton of stuff to look at, everything from browser compatibility issues to the full range of tools available at your disposal and frameworks to web optimization, asset optimization. You could even throw UX/UI design in there, so it just branches out in so many different directions.
That's not to say backend is any simpler. You're gonna have a similar range of topics that go from scaling to database optimization, DevOps pipelining, cloud computing, and the list goes on. Considering that either of these take years and years to master, there's no real clear winner in terms of mastery. So this one is a tie—they're both hard to master.
Point Number Three: Getting a Job Fast
This might be the point you care most about because you might be getting into coding to get a better job, make more money, and those are totally valid reasons to get started with it. In terms of getting a job fast, we have to look at a few things: first, the job market itself and also the competition in that market.
The market for front-end is booming, particularly jobs for React and Angular, similar frameworks like that. The thing you have going for you if you know React or Angular is they do not teach this knowledge in college because they're considered still trendy, and people getting computer science degrees are learning the fundamentals and things that have stood the test of time.
If you manage to learn React or Angular, you're going to be competing on a more level playing field with other people who have had to teach themselves the same. I've kind of hinted to the challenge of trying to learn back-end on your own, and that is that you're gonna be basically competing with computer science graduates who have been studying mostly back-end for four years.
Also, back-end interviews are much more algorithm and data structure focused, which again, computer science graduates are gonna have two full classes in that topic. So when you look at both the market and the competition, I would definitely give the first job point to front-end.
One more point around languages: learning front-end you just have a single stack, it's always going to be some permutation of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But on the back end, again, although learning a language is not impossible, you're gonna have maybe ten different languages that a back-end job could be in, and if you don't know the particular one, you're gonna be at a disadvantage to someone who does.
Point Number Four: Standing the Test of Time
When you're learning either frontend or backend, you're investing a ton of time, so a major consideration is are the things you're learning going to stand the test of time? Can you still leverage them 10 years or 20 years in the future? So does front-end or back-end stand the test of time better?
Well, the reason why a lot of computer science programs focus on Java and C is because they've been around for 30 or more years. Back-end principles, languages aside, have really stood the test of time. You can still read books back from the 70s like "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Abelson and Sussman, and it's still a staple of modern-day computing paradigms. Concepts like functional programming, relational databases, and similar concepts are not going away. So if you spend the time to learn them, you're gonna continue reaping the benefits from that knowledge going forward.
Another noteworthy point is the classic canonical languages like C often evolve into other languages, so if you know C, a lot of C-like languages are gonna be very intuitive to you—C-like languages being JavaScript, Go, and so on. Everything I just said about the backend is pretty much flipped in reverse in the frontend space. Frontend is all trendy right now. For a while, there were framework wars going on between Angular, React, Backbone, Vue, just to name a few, and those have kind of tightened up a little bit. Now, React is kind of emerging as the winner, with Angular in a close second.
The state of the front-end industry is very ephemeral, with new tools popping up every day. So if you do not like continuously learning and the risk of what you're learning now becoming irrelevant relatively soon, you might want to stay out of the front-end space. To compete, stay ahead, and never stop learning is kind of a challenge if you look at it in a certain way.
But at the same time, if no one's writing React anymore in a few years, I'm gonna be pretty pissed because I've spent so much time writing React. That being said, I don't think it's going away that soon, but there is always the chance of something you learn becoming irrelevant. It probably goes without saying that backend is the winner of this point.
Final Point: Fun
This one is totally opinion, but which one is more fun? The backend is pretty cool when you design a really useful API or a highly performant system, but it doesn't really have the same wow factor as the front-end. You can't show your friends your server and impress them with it. And unfortunately, now we live in a design-first, mobile-first world where the front-end is more important than ever, basically.
So if you don't have a frontend that draws you in and captures you, the general public just won't really care about the underlying technology. You can also use a lot of hosted backends now, like Google Firebase and similar, to basically write only front-end code and abstract away the rest. This is a good way to bootstrap new businesses and so on. My personal opinion: frontend is a little boring fun, but you're really limiting yourself if you don't learn at least a little bit of frontend and backend.
Conclusion
According to our points, frontend is the winner. But the real conclusion is that it totally depends on you. If you're more of an analytical, mathematical, engineering-type person, you will probably be more drawn to back-end just because those principles of logic hold true in that space, and you're gonna have that deep dive into the abstractions that you're probably already familiar with. On the other hand, if you're more of a creative person or just someone who hasn't really touched a lot of technical subjects, frontend will be without a doubt easier for you to ramp up on.
And again, not giving up at the beginning is the most important thing. So I hope you guys find this article informative. I wish you luck on your path to becoming an engineer, whether it's front-end, back-end, or full-stack. Just remember, stick with it and I'll see you in the next.
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