Frontend is as hard as backend

An appreciation post for every single frontend developer out here who can bear customer, project managers and designers nagging

You guys deserve a gold medal

Same dude. I have a website class and we just turned a small project in the other day. Looking at the design of some of the graphic design majors made me sad because mine was trash lol

@jhh2450 exactly and they are not appreciated as the backend

@Mba3gar I'd give anything to have their artistic touch

@nik123 first you better talk in a better way without being offensive. Second am a backend engineer and without a frontend your code is crap
Third you wish you can have their artistic immagination and creative minds to create a simple design to make everyone use your code easily

Chill bro you need to appreciate others work too

@jhh2450 many people think front-end is same as UI or graphic designer, which is totally nonsense 😖

This is a tricky one. I think you need more skill and inteligence for backend, more knowledge. Its also generally being paid more if im not mistaking. Now, having that said, the actual difficulty of both sides is hard to measure, as they are quite different in nature, its something like the stem vs art discussion. Without art/frontend world looks really shitty and miserable, but without stem/backend most things cant even exist. The misery of having to deal with frontend is great with no doubt, and I dodge it whenever I can, and props to the people who do it indeed, but it does seem a bit dishonest to represent it somewhat equal in the quality of the person you need for the job compared to backend.

I think the whole idea of frontend vs backend is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Like the term full stack. With the ability to write a web site or app in one language kinda takes away from them being separate things

Or maybe it’s just my personal experience of working in a small agency where no one really works on one area. It's good to know a bit of everything imo

I see lots of this in the industry, front end is harder than backend, backend is harder than front end, C# is harder than Python, SysAdmin is harder than DBA etc.

Truth is it's not an argument any can win as there's no definitive way to compare. Every area has it's complexities that make it difficult and every area has it simplicities.

Best advice is to respect other developers, no matter what their stack or speciality is.

@Alone agreed. the frontend is by miles harder than the backend. specially as a primary rails developer where everything is so simple. the frontend scares me.

@Alone not sure why you disclude CSS from that list. Anyone that says CSS isn't hard has never had to spend 4 hours implementing a designers whack ideas only to find it doesn't play well in IE/Edge 🤣

I give my frontend coworker turned friend a hard time but yes. its just as hard. These days they're one in the same often enough, which sucks because I can't design worth shit lol

@sunfishcc There are designers that think that and they are the problem.

Flexbox everything.....

Once upon a time frontend might have been easier. It has gotten harder in recent years with all the frameworks, build tools, different screen sizes and such while backend has become easier with the maturing of the frameworks and tech.

@freakko yes! Yes! Yet in some places backend dev are paid more than frontend.

Imho frontend is waaaay harder (to deal with). Never looked down on anyone who can come up with neat & useful frontend & never will. They have my respect all the way!

Unless you are a WordPress "developer"

I’m a backend dev and I’d argue frontend is miles harder, and it upsets me so freaking much.

It’s unnecessarily hard because it’s fucking design by committee bullshit.

I cry every time I have to deal with html and css.

Backend work is hard in its own ways, but most of it is down to problem solving within the domain, with some wrangling of the stack involved. Frontend is just this awful mess of tears and rage.

@Brolls that's my point

@Brolls are you not just saying it's harder because you're a backend dev?

@LynxMagnus No (?)

@nik123 You need both for a usable application but some people prefer to only do one of the two. I'm a backender, can't stand front end :)

yeaaaaaa, can I get a cookie too?