Recently, I told a friend of mine that I am a back-end developer. He asked me what the meaning of “back-end” web development was. It took me lots of explanation and illustration to explain what back-end means in web development. I understand, he is not a techy guy. I noticed that not just non-techy are finding it hard to understand the terms, a lot of coding newbies can’t decipher the meaning. While some who think they “understand” probably misunderstood.

Just like I explained to my friend, this article is aimed at explaining various aspects (“ends”) of web development to newbies as I would explain to a 4-year-old. Don’t be offended when I say ‘like a four-year-old’, the phrase is to tell how simple and explicit the explanation would be.

I would represent the world of web development with a medium-sized restaurant. In a restaurant, you enter and give your order, the waiter brings the order to your table.

Basically, you are the user of the restaurant(website). You are less concerned with the processes of making the food. You just want your food and make payment.

The Front-end Aspect Of The Restaurant.
The front end is everything you can see in the restaurant. The HTML is synonymous with the structure of the restaurant, the tables, chairs, and other things. The CSS is the arrangement of things, the restaurant’s painting, the styles and every other thing put in place. The JavaScript handles how you are attended to. When you walk into the restaurant, the waiter gives you the menu, you check your favourite and make a request.

Then the waiter knows what to do with your request. The waiter can also help you with other things in the restaurant.

Therefore, everything happening right there is the front-end aspect of the restaurant.

The Back-end Aspect Of The Restaurants.
After making your request, you are less concerned with the cook or the ingredients the restaurant’s cook is using. You are there enjoying the serene environment and expecting the waiter to deliver your food.

You can think of the back-end as the cooks working tirelessly to prepare the food you ordered. The waiter hands over the menu, then the cook prepares the food and give it to the waiter.

You can think of everything happening in the kitchen as the back-end. The management of the restaurant, which includes decisions on pricing, payment of staff salaries, is done behind. This is the back-end!

The APIs Aspect Of The Restaurant.

You can think of the APIs as the waiters. They serve as a medium between the user and the cook/management.

Just like the way mini restaurants can do without waiters (case of a user requesting the cooks directly), websites can also do without APIs.

The API makes it possible to communicate with other mediums.

For example, if you own a blog app, you can get data across to a mobile app via the API.

APIs also makes it possible to deliver foods outside the restaurant. You can think of the delivery men as the APIS.