Being a backend developer feels harder today than it did 20 years ago

Comparing the current back-end development landscape with that of the late 1990s, a significant change can be found. While the barriers to entry into software development have dropped, backend development roles have become more complex, and developers face a wider range of challenges and expectations.

#Comparing today’s backend development landscape to that of the late 1990s reveals a major shift. Although the barriers to entry for software development careers have lowered, the role is now more complex and developers face a wider range of challenges and expectations.

Today, engineers strive to build larger, more complex systems and face a wealth of choices in every aspect of software development. From which language, tool, platform, framework, etc. to use, to which solution, architectural style, design pattern, etc. to implement.

Added complexity is the need to design robust, scalable and secure distributed systems capable of supporting thousands of concurrent users, often with near-perfect availability, and complying with strict data handling and security regulations .

This article takes an in-depth look at how backend development has evolved over the past 20 years, revealing the factors that have contributed to its increased difficulty.

Higher User Expectations

Today’s computers have exponentially more memory and processing power, as well as other previously unimaginable capabilities. These technological leaps have enabled the development of ever more complex and powerful software.

As software functionality increases, so do user expectations.

Modern users need software that is not only globally accessible, but also offers a seamless cross-platform experience, responsive design, and real-time updates and collaboration capabilities. They expect excellent performance, high availability, and continuous updates to meet their changing needs with new features and enhancements.

This shift requires developers to leverage a range of technologies to meet these expectations, making back-end development more challenging.

Increase in scale and system complexity

The software problems we solve today are far more complex than they were 20 years ago. We are now orchestrating computer networks to process thousands of transactions per second and scaling systems to accommodate millions of users.

Developers now need to know how to handle large multi-language code bases, implement distributed systems, and deal with the complexities of multi-threading and multi-processing. Additionally, the need for effective abstraction and dependency management further complicates the development process.

For complex distributed systems, abstraction is crucial for developers to reduce complexity, hide unnecessary details, and focus on higher-level functionality.

The disadvantages of extensive use of abstraction are that debugging is more difficult and a full understanding of the system more challenging, especially due to the limitations of traditional system visualization tools.

Additionally, the proliferation of APIs requires meticulous dependency management to prevent the creation of complex, brittle, or opaque systems that make them difficult to understand, maintain, or extend.

While many developers still use whiteboards or non-interactive diagramming tools to diagram their systems, more dynamic and automated tools have recently emerged that can provide real-time insights into system architecture.

These changes and many others (e.g., increased security requirements, introduction of caching, increased expectations for test coverage, exception handling, compiler optimizations, etc.) emphasize the complexity of modern backend development increase.

The days when a single programmer could oversee an entire system are long gone, replaced by the need for large distributed teams and extensive collaboration, documentation, and organizational skills.

Overwhelming Choice

As technology evolves rapidly, developers must now navigate a large and growing ecosystem of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, tools, and platforms system.

This can lead to decision paralysis and embody the paradox of choice: It’s a mistake to think that if we give developers more choices, they will be happier and more productive. Unlimited choices are more appealing in theory than in practice.

The latest CNCF report documents the many options available in technology - hundreds of options revealed!

While a degree of autonomy in choosing the best technology or tool for a solution is important, too many choices can lead to overload and ultimately overwhelm people or lead to procrastination or inaction.

The solution is to strike a balance between giving developers the freedom to make meaningful choices and curating options to prevent choice overload. By delivering rigorously vetted, purpose-driven advice and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and best practices, we empower developers to navigate the vast technology landscape with confidence and efficiency.

Different skill sets

The emergence of cloud computing has brought additional complexity to back-end developers, requiring them to be proficient in deploying and managing applications in cloud environments procedures, understanding containerization, and choosing the right orchestration tool.

In addition to technical knowledge, the skills that modern backend developers value particularly include:

• Manage legacy software and reduce architectural technical debt. Today, most projects developers work on are "brown field." Understanding how to adapt and evolve an architecture to accommodate unforeseen use cases while managing (and potentially reducing) architectural technical debt is a valuable skill.

• Assemble software by choosing the right technology. With the explosion of software as a service (SaaS) and open source software, software development has shifted to an assembly-like approach, where backend engineers need to carefully select and combine components, libraries, and frameworks to create complete software where every part fits together seamlessly. system.

• Design scalable, high-performance and secure system architecture. Backend software engineers are also designers, and they must have a deep understanding of software design principles to create scalable and maintainable applications.

• Communicate across teams. Distributed systems are built by large teams consisting of many different stakeholders. The mark of a good engineer is the ability to communicate effectively, promoting shared understanding and efficient decision-making among all stakeholders.

Conclusion

Looking back at the evolution of backend development over the past two decades, it is clear that the role has evolved from relatively simple server-side programming tasks Shift to a multifaceted discipline requiring a broad range of skills.

Challenges such as meeting higher user expectations, managing the scale and complexity of systems, dealing with an overwhelming number of choices, and acquiring diverse skills highlight the complexities of modern back-end development.

While entering the world of software development has never been easier, being a good backend developer today requires adapting to a more complex and rapidly evolving technology environment. Having expertise in system architecture, cloud services, containerization and orchestration tools, as well as the soft skills needed to communicate effectively across teams, remains key to success in this dynamic space.

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