How many people do you need to write a web application?
Technically, writing a web application needs at least five different specialties
Technically, writing a web application needs at least five different specialties:
The UI/UX designer designs the user interface. He produces drawings of the web pages which we call “wireframes”.
The HTML/CSS developer takes these wireframes and codes them in HTML and CSS.
The front-end developer writes the JavaScript. Nowadays web applications are often JavaScript-heavy, and most front-end developers will use one of the three popular JavaScript frameworks: React, Angular, and Vue.js.
The back-end developer writes the code that runs on the server. Most often the back-end developer uses one of these five programming languages: Python, JavaScript, Java, PHP and Ruby.
Finally, the system administrator installs the web application and takes care of the server(s).
It’s common for people to do more than one of these—usually adjacent. Back-end developers often do the system administration (in which case they’re commonly called “devops”). UI/UX designers sometimes write the HTML and CSS.
There are also people who do all of them—they’re commonly called “full-stack developers”. However, as the saying goes, a jack of all trades is a master of none. Despite this, for some simple applications, it can be convenient and cheaper to have a full-stack developer.