The answer is of course: it depends "Modern" front end development will often involve build processes - gulp, browserify, whatever - that will introduce a barr

The answer is of course: it depends "Modern" front end development will often involve build processes - gulp, browserify, whatever - that will introduce a barrier for entry. Likewise if your friend wants to get into, say, C# development, you'd be much better off with a Visual Studio environment. That's not to say that either of those are necessary, but I'd suggest that they are the norm for developers in those areas. Alternatively, work with something like Sinatra and plain old HTML/CSS/JS - your friend could get a sense of one of the simplest methods of creating web applications. So - it depends. Because there are so many choices, I suggest you find out their interests first. Is it visual? Then maybe they'd prefer frontend. Is it in the overall architecture of an application? Then maybe they'd prefer the backend?