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Frontend

Ok - so frontend is the code that is served to users. When you (the client) asks a website, the package (broadly) comes with three groups of files:

  1. HTML (hypertext markdown language) - The scaffolding of a website. In charge of the basic layout and structure
  2. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - What makes websites look pretty. Everything to do with styling (and positioning)
  3. JS (Javascript) - This guy deals with functionality. If you have a button that does an action - Javascript outlines the functionality of that button

Together, these files are interpreted by your browser and turned into websites

So - We give code to clients that then gets turned into a website. That means front end code is exposed to users

danger

Never expose sensitive operations or private data on frontend code. General rule of thumb - treat frontend code as publicly available (because it is)

This is just in the context of web development though (HTML CSS and JS). More generally, frontend is just what the end user sees and interacts with

As previously stated, frontend and backend are just ways of talking about where code is being processed. For frontend - functionality is exclusively coded with Javascript (or Typescript). This is because it is the standard of what browsers can interpret.

The backend code, however, could be any programming language.

Jayden Aside

There can be multiple frontends. For example discord has a mobile application and a web application. Both are frontend applications. Both have the same backend. Its like how a house can have multiple entrances. An application can have multiple frontends exposed to users - but the inside of the house - the backend - can be the same.