What is Back-End Development?

Back-end development refers to the server-side web application logic that deals with communication between a server, application, and database. Back-end developers are often required to work with front-end developers. They need to be able to communicate with them to provide server-side algorithms of user-facing web application elements.

Ruby, Python, PHP, and Java are all web development languages to have on your resume if you are a back-end developer or striving to become one. It’s important to have an understanding of databases, application program interfaces (aka APIs), popular frameworks, and server handling.

Often it is a debate whether it is better to become a back-end, front-end, or full-stack developer, and it is an individual decision that must be made. While back-end developers deal with the server-side of the application, the front-end developers work with the client side.

A ful- stack developer does both front-end and back-end development, just not to as in depth as extent as a front or back-end developer. However, they do tend to specialize in either front or back-end development slightly.

To become a back-end developer, you want to become familiar with data structures and algorithms, frameworks, databases, and practice, practice, practice! If you are in back-end development, you will be using languages like Ruby, Java, and PHP to build an application. Tools like SQL and Oracle will help you find, save, or change data and serve it to the user in front-end code.

You can find many resources to learn about back-end development online, such as Free Code Camp courses, Stack Overflow’s web development forum, or especially the WDRL, or “Web Developer Reading List” https://wdrl.info/archive which keeps you on the up and up of the web industry.

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