A guide to servers and back-ends, for non-techies

You just bumped into one of your software engineer colleagues. You didn’t mean to; she was heading to the foosball table and you were getting a refill from the kombucha dispenser. But here the two of you are, hoping to make conversation. You lead with a tentative, “So, what is it that you do, exactly?”

She starts to tell you, and you kind of get it. You know what a user interface is, you’ve used apps before, and you know that Facebook is a website. You nod along, and the two of you part ways. Awkwardness avoided.

But sometimes, you meet “the other ones”—the back-end developers. Not knowing what you’re getting yourself into, you inquire about the ways of their kind.

Listening to these foreign words, a barrage of questions runs through your mind: What is an API? When do we use databases? And who is Jason?

What your friend is talking about is a server. Maybe you’ve heard the term before but don’t really have any idea what it is. Today, we’re going to change that.

Down the rabbit hole

When we use an app, our experience as a consumer starts and ends there. It seems natural to think of that as the entire experience. But the truth is, the app is just the front-end. There is a lot more to it than that.

Let’s say you sent me a message on a messaging platform like WhatsApp. It appears as if the message goes instantly from your phone into mine. But let’s take a closer look at this. Let’s say that you send the message when my phone is switched off. You then switch your phone off, and I switch mine on. I still get the message, even though our phones were never running at the same time!

Clearly, we’re missing something here.

The missing component is the back-end or the server.

Servers

A server is a computer that is connected to the internet and runs all the time. It has two main roles: storing data and facilitating communication.

Storage

Communication

Server application

Hardware

Do all apps need a back-end?

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