Do You Know What Exactly Web Development Is?

In this post, I want to explain what web development is and who a web developer is. I will also show you the different types of web developers and the special tasks that they do specifically.

Table of Contents

Web Development Meaning

Web development means building and maintaining websites. This is the operation that runs behind the scenes. This makes a website look good, work fast, and perform well with a seamless user experience.

This job involves developing a website for the Internet or a private network. It varies from creating a simple static page with plain text to a complex web application, electronic business, or social network.

Web development also may refer to tasks such as web engineering, web design, and web content development. It could also refer to client-side or server-side scripting, web server and network security, and e-commerce development.

However, among professionals, web development means non-design parts of creating a website; We can say writing markups and coding. In this process, we may use content management systems. As a result, the task is easier due to the basic facilities of CMS.

A team can provide web development for big organizations and businesses, including hundreds of web developers. They may follow standard methodologies like Agile. Therefore, web development might be a collaborative effort among departments rather than a specific department. On the other hand, small companies may only need a single full-time web developer or a contracting one. In addition, they may need a related position like a graphic designer.

Job Opportunities in the Web Development Industry

Since the Web is commercialized, web development is a growing industry. But what makes this growth? The answer is businesses that use their websites to advertise or sell products and services to customers.

Web development is a high-demand job and a well-paid skill globally. As a result, it can be an excellent career choice. It is one of the simplest ways to access a high salary. This is because you usually don’t need a traditional college degree to be hired.

Who Is a Web Developer?

Now, we know what web development is from the information in the previous sections. Web developers do those tasks with the help of many different coding and programming languages. The languages they use are based on the types of tasks they are running and the platforms they are working on.

The field of web development is commonly broken into two parts. These are front-end (client-side that users see and interact with) and back-end (server-side behind user-facing). Next, we have to look at each part deeper.

There are three kinds of web developer specialists. These are front-end developers, back-end developers, and full-stack developers. Front-end developers are responsible for the behavior and visuals that run in the user browser. Back-end developers deal with the servers. Full-stack developers do both parts of development at the same time.

Comparing Main Web Development Job Positions

In this section, we show that each developer, based on the job position, is responsible for which tasks?

Frontend Developer

Frontend developers take care of a website layout, design, and interactivity. They do tasks with the help of these languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They take a drawing board and turn it into a real website.

Everything you see and use, means visual parts of a website, such as drop-down menus, buttons, texts, images, etc, all come together by a front-end developer. He/she writes a sequence of programs to attach and structure elements, make them look nice, and add interactivity. These types of programs are run on the user’s web browser.

Backend Developer

Backend developers, engineer what is behind the scenes that website users don’t see. This is where the data is saved, and without this data, there is no front-end part. The backend of the web consists of a web server that hosts the website, an application for running it, and a database to contain data.

Backend developers use computer programs to ensure that the server, the application, and the database run without problems and difficulty. These developers analyze the company’s needs and provide efficient solutions for them. They use server-side languages such as PHP, Ruby, Python, and Java to do all this wonderful stuff.

Full-Stack Developer

Full-stack developers take care of both front-end and back-end aspects of development. They have to know how the web works in all layers to find out how the client-side and server-side will relate. Certainly, working up to this level of expertise will take more time as there are more things to learn.

If you are interested in both front-end and back-end, you may want to become a full-stack developer. But you should also have enough time to learn more

Conclusion

In this post, I tried to tell you what web development is and explain it. I also showed the different types of web developers and their responsibilities. However, some aspects of web development exist that I didn’t mention in this article(eg. security, etc). If it is not enough, you can do more research to find more. See the next post on the roadmap for web development.

References:

1. https://blog.openclassrooms.com/en/2018/03/28/web-development-definition/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_development

All Parts of This Series

1. Do You Know What Exactly Web Development Is?
2. Roadmaps for Web Development: Step on The Right Way
3. Web Development Resources: Learn with These First