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

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

#51

Post by zmmmmm »

I have so much empathy for people in this kind of situation. There's a brutal inhumanity about the tech hype cycle and how it deprecates and discards skills that humans poured their soul into learning in good faith. What should be rich and rewarding careers building on experience and knowledge, continuously gaining over time, become more like a mouse wheel ... constantly running just to keep up... until you eventually fall off and are cast aside.

The only advice that I have is learn the crap out of the fundamentals - they are the only things that won't change. Then use that deep strength to make surfing the hype cycle less exhausting. Use that to "lean in" and embrace change.

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

#52

Post by radicalbyte »

Zealotux wrote: post #38

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 sl…

Write automated tests for your code as you're writing it. Hitting the entire system is fine. If your code is properly factored then it should be easy to do. If not, then you get to learn how to factor your code.

Test your backend with real data, not playsets. So use millions of records instead of 3-4.

If you're touching database, then learn SQL, and learn the tooling for your database. Learn how to read a query plan, use the optimiser and design indexes.

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

#53

Post by junon »

Backend is generally easier to reason about when you're proficient, but harder to actually be proficient with. Frontend is a jungle of frameworks, ideologues, soapboxing and bloat - it really isn't all that complicated to understand, it's just been over-engineered beyond recognition.

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

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

drewcoo wrote: post #40

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…

The same issues that make frontend harder to do to certain degrees of “right” also make it fuzzier – with backend, if its not done right it (perhaps intermittently) definitely, undeniably doesn’t work.

Frontend not done right is often fuzzier and debatable, so it is simultaneously harder to do frontend optimally and easier to do frontend well-enough to get away with.

This is, perhaps, why pure front-end work tends to pay less well. Quite a lot of the time, good enough to get away with is, well, good enough to get away with.

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

#55

Post by ricardobeat »

valenterry wrote: post #32

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 y…

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.

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

#57

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Back-end things get complicated and with a lot of edge cases really fast. I mean, running something locally is easy enough; now make it work in a Kubernetes cluster. You have one service with one database; now you need to run that database worldwide over a thousand services. You have a REST API, now build a GraphQL interface, now replace them with a Protocol Buffers interface. You inherit a 10 year old PHP 5.x codebase and are told to update it to 2021 standards. You inherit a codebase built for x86/x64, but we want to add support for ARM CPU's.

Just a bunch of examples I can think of offhand as to why back-end development isn't necessarily easier than front-end.

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

#58

Post by Zealotux »

radicalbyte wrote: post #52
Zealotux wrote: post #38

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 sl…

Write automated tests for your code as you're writing it. Hitting the entire system is fine. If your code is properly factored then it should be easy to do. If not, then you get to learn how to factor your code. Test your backend with real data, not playsets. So use millions of records instead of 3-4. If you're touching database, then learn SQL, and learn the tooling for your database. Learn how to read a query plan,…

Thanks a lot for the advice, really appreciate it!

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

#59

Post by valenterry »

ricardobeat wrote: post #55
valenterry wrote: post #32

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 y…

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…

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.

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