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Comment by saiko-chriskun | Hacker News Reader

In my view, there are three main domains in the tech side of web development.

First is the designer, who's responsible for all the graphic work/creation (most likely in photoshop). This is the main UI/UX role where they're responsible for, as you said, creating a visually attractive and highly usable interface.

Next up is the frontend engineer who takes that and codes up the equivalent html, css, and javascript to interface with the backend, which would obviously be built by the backend engineer.

Now of course some of these responsibilities may overlap in some cases, for example I'm a front and backend engineer, but usually don't handle the actual design work, and there are some awesome designers out there who can also actually code up their work.

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It's interesting that you consider yourself a front & backend engineer - does that mean you would apply for both jobs? or Do you concentrate on either?

My conundrum is that employers are actively seeking "Front-End Developers" without understanding what that really means.

As someone who wears all 3 hats, print/web/graphic designer, front-end developer, and back-end developer, I generally apply to whichever description seems the most relevant to my skill-set and what I would LIKE to be doing at the company(ie. which I would come off strongest in during an interview).

I've seen many job postings where Front-End Developers are just HTML/CSS luckily this seems to be changing to include scripting languages, which I favor. Generally the database, server work is handled by the Back-End Developers and with communication the business logic is handled by both but more commonly by the back-end developer or general programming guys. (Depending on company size of course)

Design belongs to designers (but really, more often than not, upper management). At this stage in the game, good designers can give you HTML/CSS, great designers can give you scripting work as-well. But their are also great designers who can't write a line of HTML/CSS, but that's more of a experience/working as-a-team thing. I would much prefer to work with a designer who can't code, but understands basic limitations of the web and is a fantastic mockup/layout-guy, then I would with a semi-decent mockup and semi-decent coding guy. (Let's face it, if you have time and it doesn't match your usual style, you generally try to make it conform as best as possible)

Anyways, like all answers...it depends.

Keep in mind too if an ad is looking for just a HTML/CSS guy; knowing how to script may be a bonus and may come off as such, until you sit-down and the 'coder' already in place, doesn't want you touching anything. Oh, silly politics.

That's the thing - I currently am the design/web guy. But I would rather concentrate on a single area then be the guy who can do it all. Sure, it's nice to know every aspect of development, but I rather be REALLY good at one thing then be average across the border.

With that said, I think it's really our fault that there's really no clear distinction between the front-end (client side) vs. the back-end (server-side.) I've seen senior "front-end developer" who only uses jQuery because he doesn't know JavaScript. And it's funny that you bring up politics, because that guys would get mad at me because I would show him a easier way (in jQuery, mind you) for traversing the DOM.

Sometimes, I wish there's was a certification process to be able to call yourself a "designer", "developer", or "programmer". I think it would make finding job/candidates much easier.

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