What is a front-end developer?

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

None of our front-end developer positions require knowledge of any server-side languages. I suppose it would be an advantage, but it's certainly not something we look or advertise for (example of a recent front-end role we recruited for <a href="http://goo.gl/ZP6ZL" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/ZP6ZL</a> [howareyou.com])<p>Interesting question though and I look forward to seeing some of the responses.<p>[Edit] I just asked one of our front-end contractors and she said it's not usually a requirement but most job advertisements she has replied to have said it would be desirable to at least know one (depending on their stack). So, I stand corrected.

I think the distinction between all these terms is becoming annoying and unnecessary. A Web Developer or Web Engineer if you will, is the correct term for either Fron-End or Back-end. What used to be the "web designer" is a "UI/UX designer" nowadays which is fine I guess, but IMO a "web designer" that doesn't know at least HTML and CSS is no longer useful in the industry today. PSD2HTML is not the standard anymore.<p>Don't worry about the job description, if you think you're skilled for the job just apply anyway and lie about the stuff you don't know but you think you can learn. The problem with these job descriptions is that they're written by HR people that just copy/paste keywords and call it a day. Just make sure to put as many keywords as you can (in a smart fashion), because most of the entries will be processed by a computer first before reaching an actual human, at least on big companies.

As a designer that writes HTML/CSS and a tiny bit of jQuery, I don't consider myself a front-end developer because none of the job listings I see consider me a front-end developer.<p>They ask for knowledge of JavaScript/Ruby/PHP/Drupal, etc. I've stopped looking for jobs under the title "developer" because of how often it varies in what skillsets they're actually looking for.<p>That being said, all of the designer jobs I find expect you to mock something up in Photoshop and hand it over to someone to code. I personally hate having other people code up my stuff because that means I have to do additional interaction write-ups I can just code myself, so I don't really know where I fit in.

Someone who specializes in HTML and CSS, with a bit of JavaScript (mostly jQuery) and ActionScript thrown in, for the most part.<p>A senior-ish front-end developer will know at least a few templating languages and possibly a bit more programming in addition to that.

I really don't understand how someone can be only a front end developer or a back-end developer. Why would anyone want to learn just one thing when the thing that is valuable is delivering actual applications. Who wants to have to depend on someone else to accomplish anything and make a living?<p>To answer your question, a front-end or back-end developer is someone who (erroneously) sees development as sort of blue collar labor like a plumber or a electrician. A web designer is someone who decided they could just do all the easy, fun stuff while getting to decide everything and prefers to work with trade-type developers for the un-fun bits.<p>Object oriented scripting is important because without some sort of organization of code, you end up with a huge mess of code and variables. Without encapsulation you never know when and how it's safe to modify data or what side effects it might have or what code is allowed to modify what data.