Web Developer Vocabulary: A Complete Guide

Understanding Web Developer Vocabulary: A Complete Guide

Tired of not understanding what your cousin does in IT? This article is for you. This field is full of terms and phrases that not everyone understands, but don't panic: we have put together a glossary of the vocabulary of the development world.

An Operating System

This type of software links users to a computer's hardware components. It manages the computer's hardware resources (such as the processor, memory, hard drive, and input/output devices) and, through a friendly interface, provides services to programs and users. It is a sort of conductor that leads the dance.

There are several types of operating systems. The best known and most widely used are Microsoft's Windows, Apple's macOS, and Linux, which is an open-source operating system. These are operating systems for computers. For phones, we all know Android, or iOS.

The Two Sides of Development

First, you need to tell apart the two main types of development, focused on the aspects of a web application: back-end and front-end.

Back-End Development

This is development based on business logic, data management, and the server aspects of a web application. It is the server side, the hidden face of a site.

Here are the fundamentals:

The database is designed and managed by developers, along with its read and write operations.
Developers are also behind application programming interfaces, also called APIs. To design them well, it helps to know the best practices for REST APIs (in French). They enable communication between the front-end and the back-end, which allows data exchange and interactions with other systems.
They also process user requests: by performing calculations and operations that look complex to us, they return the appropriate responses.
The security of the website is in their hands. This covers managing user authentication and sessions, and protecting against potential security vulnerabilities (CVEs) (in French).
Developers deploy the application project to servers, configure its infrastructure, and handle performance management.

Front-End Development

This type of development focuses mainly on the user interface and the user experience of a web application. It is the exposed part of a site, the client side.

Here are its main tasks:

Front-end developers use specific programming languages to create and implement the visual and interactive elements of a project.
Once built, the user interface must be responsive, fast, and efficient. To achieve this, resource loading has to be optimized.
Teams also make sure the application is accessible to all users.
Developers then run tests and debugging sessions to make sure the application displays and works correctly on different devices and platforms. Among informal debugging techniques, the rubber duck method (in French) is one of the most effective and most surprising.

You now know the difference between back-end and front-end development. We briefly touched on the terms client side and server side. Here are the main points to remember.

Client Side

This refers to what happens in the user's web browser. It covers everything related to layout, buttons, forms, images, and any other visible element.

Client-side development uses programming languages such as HTML (structure), CSS (aesthetics), or JavaScript (interactivity).

This side is known for its speed, but the code is visible to the client, so there is no real confidentiality.

Server Side

The server side refers to all operations that take place on the server hosting the web application. It is the part invisible to the user, and it handles data processing, business logic, and interactions with databases.

The languages used here are JavaScript, Python, Ruby, or PHP, one of the best known.

Remember that both types of development and both sides work together to create and maintain a functional, interactive web application.

Framework, IDE, Programming Language: What Are They?

Let's use a surprising comparison to understand these terms more easily. The parts of a garage give you a car...

The framework here is a warehouse of spare parts, from which a garage, here an IDE (integrated development environment), picks the features (or parts) it needs. Finally, the metal or plastic pieces are the programming language.

A Framework

A framework is a software infrastructure that provides the basic tools of a piece of software or an application. A framework gathers libraries, components, and design patterns. These let developers build applications more easily and efficiently, based on a predefined structure. Note that a framework is not a standalone application, but rather a foundation on which a developer can build a project, using the features it offers and the ability to add others. A framework is very often tied to a programming language, for example PHP for Symfony. To understand why choose Symfony for your projects (in French), know that it is one of the most structuring frameworks in the PHP ecosystem.

An IDE

Short for integrated development environment, this kind of application lets developers write code and program thanks to the many features it offers. Each developer can organize their workflow, a.k.a. their workspace, with an IDE. Our comparison of PhpStorm, VS Code, Cursor, or Sublime Text (in French) details the strengths of each tool.

A Programming Language

A programming language is a set of rules, syntax, and symbols used to write instructions that a computer executes. Software is created thanks to programming languages.

There are many programming languages, each with its own syntax, rules, and specific features. As mentioned earlier: PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Python, or the C family of languages.

Source Code

This is the human-readable version of a computer program. It is the text of a specific programming language, written by a developer to create a web application. It has to be translated into machine language for the computer to understand it.

Merging Branches / The Process of Assembling the Parts

Git

This distributed version control system is widely used in web development. With it, you can track the changes made to a project's files, collaborate with others, and even manage the different versions of the code efficiently.

Git uses a distributed file system, which means that everyone working on a project has a complete copy of the Git repository on their own computer. Changes are saved locally in a "commit".

When using Git, you Push commits to secondary branches. To approve one of these branches, you have to request the Merge, in the form of a Pull Request on GitHub or a Merge Request on GitLab, from the administrator with rights on the repository.

Push

This is the action of sending your local commits to a remote repository, which updates the history and lets other team members get your changes. It makes collaboration and synchronization on a shared project easier.

Commits

A "commit" is the action of saving the changes made to a set of source files that belong to a version control system. It keeps a history of changes and makes collaboration between developers easier.

Merge

Merge is a term regularly used with version control systems such as Git. It refers to combining two distinct branches (the main branch and the development branch) of a Git repository into one. Branches are separate copies of the source code that help developers work on features or bugs without affecting the main version of the project, simply by creating the new version of the code.

Tests

Tests are essential in web development. A well-thought-out strategy of automated testing in PHP (in French) guarantees the reliability of every delivery. Tests refer to the processes of checking and validating that a project works properly.

There are several types of tests. Here are the main ones:

Unit tests: they focus on verifying that individual units of code, such as functions, methods, or classes, work correctly. Usually, developers write these tests themselves to make sure each component works properly in isolation.
Integration tests verify how the different components of a system interact with each other. These tests ensure that the modules work together and exchange data correctly.
Functional tests: they evaluate the behavior of a web application against the functional specifications. They make sure no errors are present.
Security tests check an application's resistance to attacks and security vulnerabilities. They identify potential flaws and highlight risks and weak points.

Note: tests can be run manually by developers using tools provided in a framework.

The Database

To simplify, it is a big Excel spreadsheet full of English terms. More concretely, a database is an organized and structured system for storing, managing, and retrieving data efficiently and consistently. It plays an essential role in every project. It makes it possible to store and manage large amounts of data in a structured way.

Caching

This system temporarily stores frequently used data in a fast memory, called a cache. It speeds up later operations that access this data. Caching makes data retrieval faster than fetching it from a slower data source. Caching improves system performance and responsiveness by reducing the load on the data source.

Going to Production

The term production refers to the environment in which an application is made available to end users. In other words, it is the public server. This production phase is the last step of the development cycle, and it represents the state in which the application is ready for use in a real environment. This step therefore brings together the work of the development team and of the operations team, which is in charge of keeping it up to date. This is called DevOps, a combination of the words Development and Operations. Modern Cloud and DevOps (in French) practices largely automate going to production.

The Technical Extra

Docker

Docker is a popular tool in web development. It is an open-source container virtualization platform. It lets developers package an application and its dependencies into an isolated, portable, self-sufficient container that can run on any operating system.

What Is a Container?

A container is a lightweight software unit that encapsulates an application and all the components it needs. It is set up in isolation on a shared host operating system. This makes it a portable unit that is simple to deploy.

Why Use Docker?

It simplifies the deployment and management of websites, while allowing the creation of standalone containers that can run on any compatible operating system.

How Does Docker Work?

Docker uses a technology called "virtualization". Don't panic, we'll explain. It means that it relies on features of the host operating system's kernel to isolate containers from each other and from the host server. Each container uses shared resources efficiently, which lets a single host run several containers without significant overhead.

What Are the Benefits of Docker Containers?

Isolation: Because they are isolated from each other, containers avoid conflicts between web applications and dependencies.
Portability: Containers can run on different operating systems or environments without additional changes.
Lightness: By sharing the same operating system kernel and the host's resources, containers are lightweight and quick to start or stop.
Scalability: Docker makes it easier to deploy and manage applications at scale, by letting you balance containers easily.

Docker is therefore a powerful tool for creating, deploying, and running web applications in isolated containers. To go further on the topic, discover why Docker is essential in production today (in French).

A Migration

Take Symfony as an example. It releases major updates every two years, and in between there are minor releases and fixes. A migration is the transition of a project from one version to another. Ideally, you avoid overly large migrations so the project does not become obsolete. To understand how these migrations work in practice, the migration guide for a Symfony project (in French) gives a concrete methodology.

"Making a Fork"

This action, well known to devs, helps in particular with contributing to open source projects.

A fork is a copy of an existing source code repository (usually a software project hosted on GitHub or its version control siblings). It creates a complete copy of the project in the workspace you use, so you can work on it independently.

You use this technique when you want to contribute to an existing project without having write access to make changes directly. You create a separate branch where you make your changes and then share them.

For Your Digital Projects

The Docs

Even the best need to check the official documentation for information they may doubt. It is therefore essential in the world of web development. The blogs of the various frameworks or programming languages are full of answers to everyone's questions.

Agile Methods

Available in many versions and applications, these methods manage the development of projects. They work on an iterative and incremental basis. Agile methods establish a set of tasks and steps to complete, which they rank by priority. A step is called a "ticket", and you can only move on to the next ticket once the client has approved the previous one. These agile methods are recognized for the communication they provide.

We hope we have helped you better understand the vocabulary developers use. You may hear these terms in discussions with them or when you hire a web agency like Efficience IT!

Going Further

Which code editor to choose, a comparison of IDEs for developers
Why choose Symfony for your projects, the PHP framework par excellence
REST API: best practices, understanding the APIs that connect front-end and back-end
Everything about caching (in French), caching explained in detail
Coding conventions (in French), the rules that structure a project's source code
MDN Web Docs: Glossary, the reference glossary of web development
Git: Official documentation, everything about the Git version control system
Docker: Official documentation, a complete guide to containerization with Docker