I've started developing websites in the 90s - when you developed on IE3, send them to Geocities over my 56k modem etc. I've been a web developer ever since, FullStack first of course, later when the BE/FE break happened I focused more on FE but still do Fullstack work, while in the last couple of years I contract as a FE dev only.
My conclusion is: todays FE is harder than BE.
- You have to test your code not only on a single VM (like when using C# or Java), but on a multitude of browsers, on various screen resolutions (there are no FE projects today that can afford to not be responsive)
- Automated testing is hard; in Backend (or regular systems programming) you usually would test a single function/class by comparing its output. But the output of a Frontend is not HTML, its an interactive piece of pixel graphic which only makes sense to a human eye. Yes, there are HTML assertions, but they will not find bugs like hidden elements due to false CSS breakpoints. Yes, there are pixel-matching testing frameworks that make sure your output looks the same to the last pixel but practical application is almost impossible because
- There is too much change. Besides the framework churn in FE space everybody is aware of, UI is something immediately visible and critiqued to every end user and PO in the process. I have sat through a lot of sprint reviews where non-technical POs/PMs raised their feedback on the UI ("can we have the button in the other corner and in blue?"). Never ever in a sprint review did anybody critique my REST API definition, my internal DB layout or my choice of ORM. On top of that, fashion is a thing. You could easily have a rock-solid, slowly evolved Backend from the early 2000s running and actively selling to a customer. Try to sell any product with the look of a 2008 website to any customer today - good luck.
There is loads more reasons, and I do not say Backend is trivial or easy, but to me FE just requires more effort. I must admit, ever since the last 2 years I did no longer have to support IE11 - which took a big burden off my daily work.
- You have to test your code not only on a single VM (like when using C# or Java), but on a multitude of browsers, on various screen resolutions (there are no FE projects today that can afford to not be responsive)
- Automated testing is hard; in Backend (or regular systems programming) you usually would test a single function/class by comparing its output. But the output of a Frontend is not HTML, its an interactive piece of pixel graphic which only makes sense to a human eye. Yes, there are HTML assertions, but they will not find bugs like hidden elements due to false CSS breakpoints. Yes, there are pixel-matching testing frameworks that make sure your output looks the same to the last pixel but practical application is almost impossible because
- There is too much change. Besides the framework churn in FE space everybody is aware of, UI is something immediately visible and critiqued to every end user and PO in the process. I have sat through a lot of sprint reviews where non-technical POs/PMs raised their feedback on the UI ("can we have the button in the other corner and in blue?"). Never ever in a sprint review did anybody critique my REST API definition, my internal DB layout or my choice of ORM. On top of that, fashion is a thing. You could easily have a rock-solid, slowly evolved Backend from the early 2000s running and actively selling to a customer. Try to sell any product with the look of a 2008 website to any customer today - good luck.
There is loads more reasons, and I do not say Backend is trivial or easy, but to me FE just requires more effort. I must admit, ever since the last 2 years I did no longer have to support IE11 - which took a big burden off my daily work.