Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

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.

I find front end much easier because of hot reloading and recent stuff like vite which instantly reflects whatever you're doing. This definitely helps to increase the speed of development.

Also there have been some recent developments like "Liveview" (1) which make it look like in future the distinction between back and front will be rather blurred.

(1) https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveView.html

The is only true at a small scale. The frontend is often like the tip of the iceberg - it hides an enormous amount of complexity.

I've worked on a lot of systems in my career and I have found there to be a lot more complex and interesting problems in the "backend" than in "frontend".

With backend development, there are very real consequences for making mistakes, and you have a high chance of being punished for making them. When I have front-enders moving down the stack I have to invest significant effort into this. Particularly around secure development, proper automated testing etc, they are fairly uncommon in the frontend but absolutely vital in the backend.

I do get more enjoyment - more feeling of having "made" something when I've worked on the frontend. There's just something about being able to interact tangibly with your work which gives me a big sense of accomplishment. That, and if you're working on a game/native code then the optimisation work is more immediately rewarding.

A big issue I'm having learning back-end coming from front-end was to gauge if my implementations were correct at all. With front-end you usually get immediate feedback: CSS mistakes and infinite rendering loops are easy to spot. With back-end, poorly optimized code can run great in development and even beyond because stacks these days are very forgiving, up to a certain point where you have no idea why things are slowing down/crashes. In a sense: I find back-end to be more abstract, you have to visualize possible issues more and develop skills to stress-test and identify bottlenecks.

A thing that helped me so far was to demystify databases a bit – looking at you, Designing Data-Intensive Applications – but I'm still seriously struggling to be confident in deploying in production.

Backend code talks via APIs. Things need to be well-defined so that machines can communicate.

Frontend code has that but has to talk UI, too. That's a much looser-defined interface relying on human nature and perception to work. Meaningful performance is based on that perception and never in the areas that were well-designed. Frontend security is something you can't just hide behind your DMZ. And the design much more susceptible to changing fashions and the whims of PMs and execs. And those people and more think they know how to do your job because it's something they can see.

Yes, backend is easier.