The essence of Backend development

The result of back-end development is the code that connects the web interface to a database, manages user interactions, and runs the web application itself. Back-end development languages handle the “behind the scenes” functionality of web applications.

An essential feature of backend development is that it works parallel with the frontend, so the user is as unaware as possible of the work taking place in the background. Backend developers focus primarily on how a website works.

They write code that serves the functionality and logic of the application developed by them and the technology they work on is never directly visible to users.

The tasks of backend programmers may include writing APIs (Application Programming Interface, a tool that uses the instructions of a given program to significantly speed up development), writing codes to interact with databases, creating libraries, working on business processes and data architecture, and much more. This often depends on the role and the company.

Backend development process at Ergomania

At Ergomania, Backend development is closely linked to Frontend development. In our practice, the main difference is that Backend developers make the website work, while Frontend programmers implement the interface, defining how the website should look to users.

Backend web development involves creating the underlying code that allows the website to process the actions that users perform on the frontend, and in turn, provide the appropriate information.
Neither works without the other: the Backend is needed for the Frontend to work, and the frontend is needed for people to actually access and interact with the website.

For larger systems, middleware, a software that sits between the operating system and the applications that run on it, comes into play. Essentially acting as a hidden translation layer, middleware allows distributed applications to communicate and manage data. Middleware is used, for example, in banking systems.

Main methods of Backend development

Back end technology is a combination of servers, applications and databases. The seven most common programming languages:

• Java
• PHP
• .NET (C#, VB)
• C#
• VB
• Ruby
• Python
• SQL
• JavaScript

Backend programming can be object-oriented (OOP) or functional. The former is a technique that focuses on the creation of objects. In object-oriented programming, instructions are executed in a specific sequence. Popular OOP languages are Java, .NET and Python.

It is worth noting here that JavaScript is a universal language, used for both backend and frontend development.

The latter is a technique that is more ‘action’ based. Functional programming uses a declarative language, which means that instructions can be executed in any order. It is commonly used in data science and popular languages include SQL, F# and R.

What do our clients gain from Backend development?

With Backend development, our clients get a perfectly functioning website system that meets their needs, which together with the Frontend developed in parallel, will deliver a website or web application for their target audience.

We always take special care to keep the Frontend and the Backend well separated during development, so that any change that needs to be made to either later can be done without necessarily touching the other.

What is the role of our clients in the Backend development?

The role of our clients during the Backend development is to approve the final list of features to be developed, to participate in demo sessions demonstrating the developed features, and to check the completed features in the test system and in the live system based on the test scenarios.

The results of successful Backend development

The results of a successful backend development are systems (code base and databases) integrated with the frontend development, both in test (UAT, User Acceptance Test) and live environments.