front end vs. back end definition [closed]

Question

In IT school and am getting conflicting answers on exactly what the front end and the back end in software development are. I have searched the web including this site, and have asked several knowledgeable people, and the core answer I get is that anything that runs on a web server is the front end, while anything that runs on the application server or the database server is the back end. So front end = how the site looks and back end = making the site work, but I get conflicting answers if .net windows forms and asp.net forms are all front end development or a combination of front end and back end.

To ask a specific question, with asp.net forms, is the aspx code the front end and the c# code behind the back end in these applications? Or is asp.net all front end? Thank you.

Answer 1

In a web application, I typically use the following definitions:

Front-end: Runs on client (users) computer

Back-end: Runs on server

In a traditional ASP application all of the markup (Razor) gets converted into HTML on the back-end before being sent to the client, so the vast majority of the work is done there. The actual HTML parsing (done by the browser) and any JavaScript is still part of the front-end though.

In general, a front-end is the UI and its logic, and the back-end is the rest of the program/system (Business logic, data access, etc)

Answer 2

In general - everything that runs on the server is considered back-end and everything that runs on the browser is front-end.

Usually - the back end code generates a code the will run on the browser, which is a front end code.

asp.net is considered back end, and if it generates html/css/javascript - these will run on the browser and thus they are front end.