[LBarret]

this is a bit disingenuous. the back-end technologies are quite stable and based on not-perfect-but-reasonable semantics. Django/SQLALchemy don't change that much.

Front-end on the other end is a mess. JS/HTML/CSS as tools are clearly unfit for the current needs.

[scriptkiddy]

I think backend frameworks do change. I think the difference lies in the velocity of change.

Front-end frameworks tend to move laterally; e.g. implementing a new design pattern or changing the workflow with an existing API.

Back-End frameworks tend to move vertically; e.g. adding new features or abstractions and developing generic bootstrapping procedures.

I'm glad you brought up Django here. I work with Django as my primary back-end. I think it does a great job abstracting the stuff you don't normally need to worry about while persisting the ability to modify it if need be. It seems like every update to Django is designed to make the developer's life easier. It doesn't require complicated build tools. It has a built in dev server. It includes a fantastic and secure ORM. It has it's own easy to use templating language. You can build an entire web application with Django and no 3rd-party packages if you wanted to. Contrast that with something like Node/Express/whatever and you can see the two different camps of developers a bit more clearly.

Sure, maybe my Python runtime is slightly slower than a Node runtime. Maybe the lack of async request handling(not really a problem with channels or celery) means I can't handle as many concurrent requests. Here's the thing. Hardware is cheaper than developer time. If I have an overloaded server, I can just spin up another with the push of a button and pay 10 bucks to run it for a whole month. 10 bucks is like 20 minutes of developer pay.

That's not to knock on Node, it has it's use cases, but the ecosystem it exists in is one of infinite dependencies and breaking changes.

In conclusion, I think back-end frameworks do change. I believe that changes to back-end frameworks have a different velocity to those on the front-end. I also believe that the changes made are a direct result of a framework's ecosystem. I hope that made sense.

[3ch1dna]

The problem is that I think a lot of back-end frameworks change (and/or are created in the first place) as just a means to pad the developer(s) that coined it. All the new implementations of JS that are increasingly more backend just seem like a lazy way of not having to learn a "real" OOP language and just pressing boundaries. Which is great in some respects, but I feel like we could be making better headway as a collective resource by working on improving what's already there (without breaking it in the process) instead of making new things so the new kids to the game don't have to try so hard.

HTML is akin to translating. I know devs who have done front end for 20 years who can't begin to wrap their heads around scripting because it's not just wrapping text in brackets to translate to a screen, but they can pull of tricks in CSS like a shark breathes water. Yes, CSS is a mess and I think a lot of that was trial and error and needs to be standardized, but it's an example still of working to make something that is already there do its job better rather than making something new and shiny to replace it so you can add another language to your portfolio.