What is web development?

The technical and technological advances the world has seen in recent years, along with the digitalization of businesses, have given rise to many new careers, including web development. In this article, we invite you to discover the web development sector, its various professions, and the most commonly used programming languages.

What is web development?

Web development is the set of tasks related to the design of websites or web applications hosted on servers and accessible either via intranet or the Internet. In more practical terms, web development means writing code or programming to display certain information. Web development involves, among other things:

What does a web developer do?

A web developer , sometimes called a web programmer, is a person who is responsible for carrying out web projects designed by the company that employs them or by their clients. The developer can start from a simple exchange with the client to propose a website. More generally, the web developer works from a specification provided by the client, which brings together all the features and content of each page of the website or web application.

It is recommended for a web developer to work from a specification to set clear objectives and regularly check that their work matches the client’s expectations.

What are the different types of web development?

There are three distinct categories in web development, which translate into three professions: Front End developer, Back End developer and full stack developer.

The Front End Developer

It also allows you to link to other pages inside or outside the website;

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): CSS, on the other hand, is a complementary language to HTML that allows you to specify how to display text and other elements written with HTML. In other words, CSS is responsible for the aesthetics of the website;

JavaScript : JavaScript makes the site interactive. For example, it can display a specific message when the user clicks a specific button.

The Front End Web Developer is responsible for the site’s natural referencing, also called SEO (Search Engine Optimization), modifying images as well as checking the site’s display on different browsers and on different devices (phone, tablet, PC, etc.).

The Back End Developer

Unlike a front-end developer who works on the visible part of the site, a back-end developer works on the server side. The code written by a back-end developer will, for example, store customer information in a database or interact with other applications.

Some of the languages ​​used by Back End developers include:

the PHP language , which is one of the most widely used languages ​​since it is used by most content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal;

They are used in the majority of cases for the design of reactive and scalable web applications. There is also the SQL language, which has the particularity of being intended for the management and analysis of databases.

The full stack developer

This position is highly sought after by startups, which value full-stack profiles for their versatility.

HTTP and REST: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) facilitates communication between web clients and servers, while Representational State Transfer (REST) ​​provides standards and constraints for creating web services;

Web architecture: As a full-stack developer, you’ll need to understand how code and data should be structured, how to separate your files, and how to perform computational tasks.

What training courses are available to become a web developer?

To become a developer, higher education is required. Starting with a BTS (Higher National Diploma), a DUT (University Technology Diploma), or a degree in computer science is a good start, but you can supplement this training with: