No, frontend is easier.
Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
81–90 of 179 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#82Backend easy? Only if you do easy and simple stuff.
Dozens of microservices, k8s, data pipelines, dbms migrations, multi db type, concurrency, stateful stream processing...
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#83No, 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…
Building an MVP backend is a lot easier, but there is no limit to how much work you can put into a backend to a typical app. Frontend is a pretty much solved problem, getting to that state takes longer than the backend MVP but after that there isn't that much more to do. Or do you think that reddit, twitter, facebook or google put more work into their frontends than everything that goes on in their backends? Recreating their frontends isn't that much work, recreating their backends however...
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#84Currently in the process of pivoting to backend/fullstack after 10 years of mostly frontend and here are some thoughts:
- If what you're doing is some corporate glorified database explorer with forms, then frontend is easier - especially in(gasp!) Angular. I've seen people pull two jobs doing just that. Backends of such applications tend to have actual challenges, like pulling data out of literally a dozen of sources, complex business logic etc., although once taken care of they're not an issue anymore - requirements don't tend to change significantly over the life-cycle of such an application.
- On the other hand if your app is a product of some hip-SV-startup then there's no end to what clients can come up with to make your life harder.
I guess it all boils down to the type of user the app is catering to.
I want to say backend is more predictable, but I'm doing Node.js at the moment, so nope(looking at you npm versions 7, 8).
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#85You can't learn things? I don't think "since 2007" is that long to be honest. I'm a bit confused how you can't be "good at ES6" in a way where you wouldn't struggle with gradual advancements in every other programming language. Maybe you just don't like frontend development, and would prefer backend, but I wouldn't say one is easier than the other. Backend development can go through churn and change and unreliability…
at some point, one becomes exhausted from learning things that are so short lived that they're effectively useless the next year. There's a fatigue in knowing that what you're working hard to master today will be laughed at tomorrow, it makes you cynical, or at least tired.. It's not like that with most things in the world, learn math, the new stuff will only gradually creep in, the foundational concepts and ideas do…
> Learn React or Angular or whatever, and you'll have, if you're lucky the next two years to polish and make use of that knowledge before it goes out..
This is just a meme. React and angular aren't going anywhere. Especially React is too big to disappear. Even if it falls out of fashion, there would be 1000s of apps built in it that need maintenance.
Whatever DOES end up replacing React is going to share more with it than not. Data-driven UIs that are a pure function of their state ain't going out of style.
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#86The complexity and the need to update your methology does not depend on being front or back-end. It depends on the specific project you are working on. You can be working on an desktop-only internal system or on a system that should support vr, mobile and desktop at the same time.
But without the willingness to update your knowhow in the IT (after a mere 14 years of approximately 45 years you have to work) you better think carefully if software development is the right area for you. The rate of change will accelerate even more in the future. The times where you learned in school and worked the same way 45 years is long gone.
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#87I think that depends a lot on how you define "backend". Writing code to take requests, verify inputs, put things in databases, pull things out of databases, work with third party APIs, etc isn't too bad and the tech isn't moving particularly fast, so it's easier to keep up than frontend. The way backend code takes in requests and handles them and returns responses hasn't really changed that much in the last 10 years.
But if your definition of "backend" includes devOps and cloud computing like edge functions and building using hosting-provider-specific features like AWS's featureset, then "backend" is moving significantly faster than frontend, and it's a hell of a lot harder to learn as you go.
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#88No, 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…
> 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#89No, 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…
thanks that's very insightful
Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?
#90You can make back-end work be as fiddly and churny as front-end, but it's really hard to do so. There's so much more stability, and the things you learn about the frameworks and technologies don't have a half-life of mere months.