Author Topic: Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment  (Read 3541 times)

micah

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Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment
« on: October 14, 2014, 08:31:30 AM »
Wasn't sure which board to put this work question in...

In every web job I've had, my role has been to build out a website or application from start to finish (that is after its been planned and designed by others.)

At my current job there are 3 of us that currently have that work flow but we've decided to hire a 4th programmer who only does front end.  Apparently he's awesome with CSS3 and JavaScript but he knows nothing about server side languages or databases.  The 3 of us already here just got our titles changed to include the phrase "full stack developer" to contrast to the new hire with a more limited role.

He starts in a couple weeks but I don't think any of us here really know how exactly we're going to utilize him. 

So whats your experience with this?  I can't imaging doing only server-side programming without styling my own output.. and further more, I'm not sure how one builds the dynamic HTML/Javascript elements of a page without seeing how the server-side output is formatted.

What is the usual work flow for this kind of thing.  Does one person build the front while the other builds the back then someone hooks them together? does everyone work on the same dev site at the same time?  Is there a good resource on the web that could help define these roles?

Just curious.
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ober

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Re: Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2014, 09:22:46 AM »
We do a mix of that here and I've played both roles.  Normally the person doing the front end work will setup the screens and provide place holders for listings or options and then the backend folks will either create the necessary methods to provide the data or directly update the view.  It can work quite well and both sides can spend time troubleshooting their own areas.  I'd almost rather have that then have people that are really good at one and suck at the other.  We have a lot of good backend people here but they can't make anything look good to save their lives.  I'm actually in the process of building out a UI team with one existing team member and a new hire at the beginning of 2015.

The UI team will also be doing mockups for future development too which helps with the general design of things.

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Re: Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2014, 10:23:44 AM »
What is the usual work flow for this kind of thing.  Does one person build the front while the other builds the back then someone hooks them together? does everyone work on the same dev site at the same time?  Is there a good resource on the web that could help define these roles?


Hook them together first, then build them. (ie., clearly define what the APIs will be, then the front end guy can code against those APIs and the back-end guys can implement the functionality.)

Mike

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Re: Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2014, 01:36:19 PM »
Haven't done that for pure web but we did it a lot for the games where there were server programmers (me and two others) and client programmers (working in the unholy obj-c).  Things basically followed this format:

1.  Designer defines the feature and comes up with some very (very) rough mockups
2.  Both sides are presented the feature and clarifications are made
3.  Server and client talk and figure out what they'll need from the other side and define the API.
4.  Server side goes and does up their part and gets it on the development server.
5.  Client then goes and does their part using the dev server.
6.  Both sides come back together to discuss problems because they forgot about some piece of data

If you have clear separation of front and back then it isn't that difficult.  When your views are muddled in with your controllers you are going to have a painful time.

micah

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Re: Front End vs Back End in professional enviornment
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2014, 01:52:20 PM »
cool guys, thanks for your insights
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