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Digital Literacy Computer Basics Computer Languages What Some Common Languages Do and How They Work Together

What is the differences in the content of front end language and back and lauguage and their properties?

Still trapped in Computer Basics questions. I really hope to get some detailed imformation. Thanks a lot!

1 Answer

James Copeland
James Copeland
12,550 Points

The front-end involves everything that the end-user sees. For example, you are a user of this forums, most of what you are seeing and interacting with on these forums as an end-user is a product of front-end development. Languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript directly effect how the end-user interprets and interacts with what they're seeing from their web browser.

The back-end involves manipulating & storing data, essentially the magic happening behind the scenes that you don't see much of (if any) as an end-user. Back-end development can be thought of as the "brains" of the application and exists primarily on servers and databases. Going back to the context of these forums, the files that make up the forums are stored on a web server somewhere (quite possibly several web servers). These files communicate with a database that stores all posts, users & a bunch of other data. PHP, Python and Ruby are a few examples of languages that deal with the backend. If I had to guess, I'd say that this forums is put together using PHP.

So to piece together the whole example, front-end languages are controlling how you view & interact with the forums in your web browser (client-side: HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Back-end languages are controlling how the data is manipulated and stored on the server, such as when you make a new question or post a reply (server-side: backend language such as PHP manipulating the data and storing said data in a database, such as a MySQL database).

Ken Alger
Ken Alger
Treehouse Teacher

James Copeland - just FYI, most of the Treehouse back end is done with Ruby on Rails. I believe the forum is as well.