[nishmastime]

I think it's weird to compare server application development to client development which is an entirely different beast.

Client development on any platform is more complicated than the server stack. Back-end API devs have a much simpler job for most apps too. We as back-end devs like to pretend otherwise even though our app runs on just one machine.

[erik_seaberg]

We can't even integration test all our team's portion of the system on one machine with kafka and datastores mocked out. Production is up in the thousands; I added about a dozen for the weekend just for a backfill.

[freedomben]

> Back-end API devs have a much simpler job for most apps too. We as back-end devs like to pretend otherwise even though our app runs on just one machine.

I don't see how you could possibly say this in such general terms. Every app is so different. Even simple crud apps of any size are not running on "just one machine." Even most small backends have at least an API server and a job server, plus database(s) and queue(s) for communicating, plus DNS, TLS certs, etc.

Sometimes the front end is much more complicated, sometimes it's not. There's really no way to generally compare without being wrong 50% of the time.

[AznHisoka]

Yep, sometimes the front end is more complicated - it depends on the application. Generally speaking though, the hardest problems in the backend are much harder than the hardest problems in the front-end. Like, I'm sure the PhD's Google are hiring are not working on front-end stuff.