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No, Backend is not easier than Frontend. Both are equally hard, since you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of t

No, Backend is not easier than Frontend. Both are equally hard, since you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of technology & tooling, no matter of your niche. If not, your job will become worth less since you are going to be automated away at some point. A fallacy that I found many frontend-developers have is that they believe Backend is the same as Frontend, just that you don't have to deal with browsers, can work in one language and just do some data conversion. Even if this is true in some cases, they forget the most important thing: the data. On the frontend, you can pretty much always just create a new version of your software, deploy it and then you are done. The only thing you need to be careful about is that you use the backend APIs correctly. If you mess up, you roll back to the version before and you are good. Not so on the Backend. If there are changes in how the data is stored, structured/formatted and processed, then there is also the chance that you might screw up data. Potentially you cannot revert this and the damage is permanent. Sometimes you can but it is very painful and needs to be done with extreme care. This is one of the reasons why Backend seems to be more stable - because the impact of errors is higher and will put more stress on you. Therefore, I find backend less rewarding - it takes longer for you to see results, because you must be more careful. Disclaimer: of course it can also be that it's the other way around, but usually it is like I described.

deleted 5y ago
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ricardobeat 5y ago
Data / API / DB design will take 10%-20% of your time at most (unless you’re a DBA), maybe as low as 1% on a large company where almost everything you touch was made by someone else. In my experience (10+ years) backend is almost always faster when it comes to building apps. Not running your code on 300 different devices and OSs, or having to deal with 20 years of backwards compatibility is a big advantage. Plus the library churn as mentioned, I don’t know any ecosystem that comes close to JS (cue the Remix announcement from yesterday…) At $currentJob, backend features (go + pgsql) are usually done in hours while the FE/app development (React) goes on for days / weeks. It’s a bit unnerving. So, is backend easier? It depends, but it can certainly be a lot less stressful.
- valenterry 5y ago
  I have the impression that your experience is mostly limited to creating new applications, from scratch up. But in reality, most backend-work is maintaining and extending existing backends and then things become much more difficult. And that's also why backend is different from frontend: it's easy to throw a frontend away and replace it with a new one - try to do that with a backend - usually much much harder.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    Even new stuff has challenges. Integrating API's for other devices and services that your app uses. Working with analytics and reporting.
  - spoiler 5y ago
    > it's easy to throw a frontend away and replace it with a new one - try to do that with a backend - usually much much harder. Untrue. I work at a company that's swapped out the frontend and then later the backend. I had to work on both of the projects because, and I can tell you without a any doubt in my mind that they were both equally challenging (for different reasons, but that's beyond the point). In my experience frontend-only (or frontend-focues) devs tend to underestimate backend work, and the the backend devs are equally guilty of doing the same about frontend work. Everyone thinks they've got it the harderst. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - valenterry 5y ago
      I'm sure that this also happens sometimes and that there are products where the frontend is the main part and requires more work than the backend. But I still believe that it's usually easier and more valuable to recreate the frontend, and the reason is that Backend is (on average) more stable, grows over a longer time. The reason is also that the risk of replacing the backend is higher, since for a frontend, you can usually use two of them in parallel (think AB testing) without much problems. But if you do the same with the backend and the new backend writes incorrect data into the db, then the old backend also starts to behave incorrect. Hence harder to change.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of technology & tooling, no matter of your niche Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. I'd say that if anything, the $$$ per unit of effort is much higher working for small businesses building CRUD-like apps than working at let's say Google or Netflix where all the low-hanging fruits have already been taken. To go back to frontend vs backend, the frontend world is always changing and you're often pushing the limits in what's possible, where as for backend, CRUD is a solved problem, the ecosystem moves much slower and there's a lot of mature frameworks to take care of the boilerplate.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > the frontend world is always changing and you're often pushing the limits in what's possible What limits are there in the frontend world? Modern frontends could run on hardware from 20 years ago unless you are talking about games. Libraries and clients change etc, but the problems you can solve using them doesn't. 20 years ago you had to build your frontend as a desktop app if it did complex things, 10 years ago you could build that in the web. But it is still the same thing.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > What limits are there in the frontend world? Like making that new scroll hijacking feature that a marketing guy saw on Apple’s website work on IE11 or something. Again, none of these features are essential, but from the business perspective they are still requirements. In comparison, most of what you’d do on the backend is a solved problem and there’s existing reliable & battle-tested tooling such as frameworks and relational databases that you can offload the hard work to.
- valenterry 5y ago
  > Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. But that's exactly what I'm saying! Just continue the thought: if CRUD is so easy, but money can be made then it will be automated away by frameworks or even commercial products. So less people will be needed and hence people will lose their jobs. Of course, the demand also increases, but still, think about it: 25 years ago, you could earn a lot of money by simply creating basic websites for people. This has become much easier/faster to do now, but making a lot of money with it has gotten much harder as well.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
thanks that's very insightful

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ricardobeat 5y ago

Data / API / DB design will take 10%-20% of your time at most (unless you’re a DBA), maybe as low as 1% on a large company where almost everything you touch was made by someone else. In my experience (10+ years) backend is almost always faster when it comes to building apps. Not running your code on 300 different devices and OSs, or having to deal with 20 years of backwards compatibility is a big advantage. Plus the library churn as mentioned, I don’t know any ecosystem that comes close to JS (cue the Remix announcement from yesterday…) At $currentJob, backend features (go + pgsql) are usually done in hours while the FE/app development (React) goes on for days / weeks. It’s a bit unnerving. So, is backend easier? It depends, but it can certainly be a lot less stressful.

valenterry 5y ago
I have the impression that your experience is mostly limited to creating new applications, from scratch up. But in reality, most backend-work is maintaining and extending existing backends and then things become much more difficult. And that's also why backend is different from frontend: it's easy to throw a frontend away and replace it with a new one - try to do that with a backend - usually much much harder.
- bluedino 5y ago
  Even new stuff has challenges. Integrating API's for other devices and services that your app uses. Working with analytics and reporting.
- spoiler 5y ago
  > it's easy to throw a frontend away and replace it with a new one - try to do that with a backend - usually much much harder. Untrue. I work at a company that's swapped out the frontend and then later the backend. I had to work on both of the projects because, and I can tell you without a any doubt in my mind that they were both equally challenging (for different reasons, but that's beyond the point). In my experience frontend-only (or frontend-focues) devs tend to underestimate backend work, and the the backend devs are equally guilty of doing the same about frontend work. Everyone thinks they've got it the harderst. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - valenterry 5y ago
    I'm sure that this also happens sometimes and that there are products where the frontend is the main part and requires more work than the backend. But I still believe that it's usually easier and more valuable to recreate the frontend, and the reason is that Backend is (on average) more stable, grows over a longer time. The reason is also that the risk of replacing the backend is higher, since for a frontend, you can usually use two of them in parallel (think AB testing) without much problems. But if you do the same with the backend and the new backend writes incorrect data into the db, then the old backend also starts to behave incorrect. Hence harder to change.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of technology & tooling, no matter of your niche Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. I'd say that if anything, the $$$ per unit of effort is much higher working for small businesses building CRUD-like apps than working at let's say Google or Netflix where all the low-hanging fruits have already been taken. To go back to frontend vs backend, the frontend world is always changing and you're often pushing the limits in what's possible, where as for backend, CRUD is a solved problem, the ecosystem moves much slower and there's a lot of mature frameworks to take care of the boilerplate.

Jensson 5y ago
> the frontend world is always changing and you're often pushing the limits in what's possible What limits are there in the frontend world? Modern frontends could run on hardware from 20 years ago unless you are talking about games. Libraries and clients change etc, but the problems you can solve using them doesn't. 20 years ago you had to build your frontend as a desktop app if it did complex things, 10 years ago you could build that in the web. But it is still the same thing.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > What limits are there in the frontend world? Like making that new scroll hijacking feature that a marketing guy saw on Apple’s website work on IE11 or something. Again, none of these features are essential, but from the business perspective they are still requirements. In comparison, most of what you’d do on the backend is a solved problem and there’s existing reliable & battle-tested tooling such as frameworks and relational databases that you can offload the hard work to.
valenterry 5y ago
> Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. But that's exactly what I'm saying! Just continue the thought: if CRUD is so easy, but money can be made then it will be automated away by frameworks or even commercial products. So less people will be needed and hence people will lose their jobs. Of course, the demand also increases, but still, think about it: 25 years ago, you could earn a lot of money by simply creating basic websites for people. This has become much easier/faster to do now, but making a lot of money with it has gotten much harder as well.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

thanks that's very insightful