Which Path Should You Choose?

so you just found out about programming and you found out you really really loved it especially web development and you want to look into becoming a web developer but you're not really sure what path you want to take maybe you want to be a UI designer a UX designer a front-end developer backhand developer full stack developer maybe you don't even know what all these things mean well that's perfect for you to come here because in this video I'm gonna tell you the differences between all these different types of developers and show you which one will be best fit for you so without any further ado let's get started now welcome back to web dev simplified my name is Kyle and I'm here to simplify the web for you so if that sounds interesting make sure you subscribe to my channel for more videos of me simplifying the web now on the topic of web development there's really two main things that people think of and that's back-end and front-end and then kind of the third one of full stack development which is the combination of both back-end and front-end development those aren't the only types of developers out there though I'm gonna start with them at the beginning though because I think the easiest to understand the differences between will start with a back-end developer a back-end web developers job is to take care of everything that the user doesn't see they take care of the server they take care of the API they handle all of the incoming requests handle the database interactions they take care of pretty much everything that's on the backend of the website that the user will never see the front-end developer on the other hand they take care of essentially everything the user interacts as' they're dealing with the HTML the CSS the JavaScript react any front-end libraries for example they're really building the user experience for the users as well as potentially doing design work but maybe not they may just be doing JavaScript work or just HTML work and not really as much design work but that's kind of the main separation between back-end and front-end the idea of a full stack developer is someone that does both back-end development and front-end development usually they're not as in-depth into either one of the topics but they're good at both of them and are really good at gluing the two together they're really good at making the connections from the front end to the back end which is really important now you may think that those are the only options out there for web development but inside of each of these options of back-end front-end and full stack there are tons of other specializations and there's also even options outside of that realm one of the biggest things that people forget about is the idea of DevOps and then adopts are the people that take care of all of the stuff that happens even behind the end of the back end they're like the back back end people essentially DevOps deals with making sure all of your stuff works properly on your servers they deal with setting up your servers getting all of your applications connected on your servers setting up your database making sure your application can talk to your database doing all of that fancy backend work that even the back-end developers are not very good at for example me I am not at all good at DevOps it took me forever to get my own website up and running so DevOps is definitely not my specialty but when it comes to other specialties like full stack that is really where I specialize so you don't have to be an expert in all of these different territories you really just need to choose the one that resonates best with you in general if you're more of a design focused and creative person you may like the front-end more for example me I enjoy the front end more than the back end for the most part because I have a more creative side to myself other people that really like the more logical side of things may enjoy the back end more because there's not any of that creativity aspect you're not really creating user designs you're more implementing business logic ap is that kind of stuff server interactions and not so much user interactions so already we've broken down what we're doing into four main parts we have DevOps which is way on the back we have the backend than the full stack people and then the front-end people and that's kind of the bridge from all the way on the back to all the way on the front but inside the front-end there's even more that you can break down into if you're a really creative and design oriented person you can be more of a front-end designer or even a graphic designer where you spend most of your time in HTML and CSS and not nearly as much in JavaScript and you may even work in programs such as sketch figma or illustrator where you're actually building designs not in code but in some other program specifically meant for building out web designs this is a really great route for someone that's really creative and really likes design I am not nearly as good at design as I need to be to be a full front-end designer so that's why I stick more in the full stack side of things because I prefer to be able to do both also in the front-end you have UI and UX designers and developers and these people their goal is to really make either the user experience really good or the user interface really good so the user interface people are really about making the site look really good while the user experience people are about making this site really easy to use for the users these two rules really have a lot of overlap between them so I like to kind of group them into one section but generally the UX people so the user experience people are going to work a bit more on the JavaScript side of things while the UI people are going to work a bit more on the CSS and HTML side of things but there's a lot of overlap between the two so really if you're gonna do one you can also do the other one fairly easily another kind of forgotten type of developer out there for web development is someone that specializes only in the database all they do is work on writing really efficient database queries and making sure all the database related information between your app and to your database is really solid and works really well these kind of rules usually only crop up in larger companies that have such large databases and interactions that they actually need specific database people while smaller companies usually will rely on the back end or potentially even the front end developers working on building up the database as it needs to be in general though you'll see mostly the back end developers working on the database or specific database people only so now that we've broken down and defined all the different types of developers out there let me break down why you would want to choose one over the other based on your specific personality type and we're gonna start with DevOps because DevOps is by far the most different out of all of the different types of developers the DevOps developer is someone that really enjoys working on the very nitty-gritty machine level things because you're not going to have almost any graphical interfaces almost everything you do is going to be through a Linux terminal or command line and you're going to be most likely SSH into servers that you're controlling through your company and doing a bunch of command line related interfaces and also just hooking up all the different infrastructure potentially on AWS or some other platform like digitalocean if you really enjoy that nitty-gritty of how the entire internet works together and is connected and how servers and databases communicate between each other and you don't really need graphical interfaces you like to prefer to work in the command line on Linux then DevOps may be a great option for you and I would definitely look into it now moving a little bit further away from DevOps we have the database related people and this is a little bit more removed from web development than the other options but it's still something very connected to love development so if you enjoy writing things in sequels such as Postgres my sequel even no sequels such as MongoDB and you just really are into those queries and writing really complex sequel queries that I would highly recommend looking into a database option at a potentially larger company so next we're gonna move on to the back-end developer which is kind of a very first step in development that most people think of when they think of the web and the back-end developer is someone that generally really likes the logical side of things more so than the creativity side of things you're gonna be doing a lot of work on defining your controllers your routes your models your database interactions as well as things such as testing in the backend testing seems to be much more prevalent than in the front end even though recently the front-end has gotten a lot better at testing but I definitely said the backend is much more further along for testing so if you really like that logical define tested application I'd highly recommend going with the backend over the front-end also another nice thing about the backend over the front-end is in the backend you're not gonna have to deal with different versions of browsers the software on the backend is defined by you so it's always going to be the same version which means it can be easier to work with because you don't have to worry about supporting a bunch of older versions of things on the backend like you do on the front end so if you enjoy that level of stability and tested miss then I would highly recommend checking out back-end development over front-end development next we're gonna skip over a full stack development and come back to that one last because it's a combination of both back-end and front-end and then we're going to jump in to front-end development next now with front-end development you're really gonna like this if you are the more creative person like I've mentioned in the front-end you get to do a lot of creative work where you design the CSS for how your site's gonna look you get a design the interactivity through the JavaScript and you get to be the closest to what the user is actually seen so what you design is actually what the user sees which can be really rewarding to know that what you're building the user is actually seen and interacting with and actually appreciating another thing about the front-end that you may not like as much is that the front-end generally has potentially less tests because it's a bit newer the idea of doing a lot of work on the front end is much newer than the back end which has been around for so long which also means that things are changing a lot in the front-end you know we have things like react and view and angular they're all trying to compete to be the number one framework right now and new frameworks are coming up all the time which means that if you choose the front-end route you're most likely going to have to spend more time learning things than if you want the background route since things change so much more on the I actually find that to be a benefit because I love learning new things so if you enjoy learning things the front end would be a really good option for you also another downside potentially on the front end is you have to deal with supporting older browsers because browsers are evolving over time but you can't guarantee all your users are on the latest browsers which means that you sometimes have to constantly support older browsers which means you need to make sure your code is tested on all these different browsers which can be difficult to do going a little bit further down the front end route we have the UX versus UI designer and essentially the difference between these two is they both are very creative and design focused but a UI designer is going to spend much more time dealing with CSS and actual presentation and how things look and they're even going to most likely deal with tools such as pigma and sketch to create those designs while a UX designer is going to spend more time working out how things actually work there'll be the people building components in the library such as react or angular so they're going to be more in the JavaScript world while the UI designer is going to be more in the front-end world on the CSS and it really depends on if you enjoy that more design focus of building something based on looks or if you enjoyed the user experience set of things in the JavaScript and making things actually function well for the user but it really doesn't matter too much which one of those do you choose because as I said they have a lot of overlap between the two which is why in many smaller companies they don't have specific UX and UI roles they just have a front-end developer and now lastly we're gonna talk about the full stack developer this is a role that a lot of times you actually won't see as much in larger companies because they want to have dedicated back-end and front-end people but in smaller companies that don't have the money to be able to support a full front-end team and a full back-end team they're going to hire full stack developers and the idea of a full stack developer is that they're good in both the back end and the front end they're not going to be as good as a full-time back-end developer or full-time front-end developer but they're gonna be better as one person at making both of them work than if they had just a back-end developer or just a front-end developer so the idea of a full stack developer is to just be really ro rounded in all the different technologies that come with back-end and come with front-end you don't have to be an expert but you need to be passable and good at essentially building out a full application from the very very back end connecting your database all the way to how it looks for the user using the CSS in HTML and potentially even creating designs and tools like sketch or figma now if after all of that you're still unsure which route you want to take I would recommend just going with the full stack route for now because that at least will expose you to both the front end and the back end of web development and as you get deeper into both front end and back end you're most likely going to find one that you prefer over the other and once you do I would spend the majority of your time working on that one that you prefer so you can become really proficient in either the front end or the back end if that's your route otherwise like I mentioned you can go with the database route or the DevOps route if that's your cup of tea and that's all I got if you think I missed a developer rule make sure to let me know that in the comments below because I'd love to hear the options out there that I hadn't even thought of also if you want to see more of my videos make sure you click over here to check them out and subscribe to my channel for more videos where I simplify the web for you thank you very much for watching and have a good day [Music]

Channel: Web Dev Simplified

Views: 35,737

Rating: 4.9806867 out of 5

Keywords: webdevsimplified, frontend vs backend, frontend developer, front end vs back end, front end develper, dev ops developer, developer roles, web developer roles, which web developer, which web developer role, choose backend or frontend, choose back end or front end, full stack vs back end vs front end, how to become a web developer, how to choose web developer role, web developer path, choose web developer path, is full stack real, what is full stack, what is frontend, frontend

Id: 5vWa3gZq1TI

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 10 2019