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What’s the difference between web developer and software developer?

What’s the difference between web developer and software developer?

Both are same or different? If it’s different so, what’s the difference?

 

Same same but different. A web developer tends to focus on front end technologies – html, javascript, vuejs, node, react.

 

If you also include backend technologies like nodejs, database, REST api, java, etc you tend to be more a full-stack developer. I would say web developer is just a specific stream of software development.

 

Then you can be a software developer and do things like .NET, c++ and Ada for various windows and linux application development, or web application development.

 

“Website” developer is probably more narrow to static websites – html, css ect.

 

 

Traditionally the web was a means of sharing information and data so “web development” started out as more of a bunch of online magazines / news papers and you could download stuff. However it has come a long way where we now do things on the web that we traditionally installed software on our computers to do so the line between the two types of development is becoming extremely blurred especially with cloud based development growing more prominent which can allow traditional software to live exclusively on the internet. Where we once used C++ and C# to build software to run on a computer, we can now create the same type of functionality with Javascript. In fact TypeScript was created to allow us to use Javascript in a C# type of manner so we can build complex websites with the same approach taken with software development.

 

One distinction that separates the 2 is software developers for the most part only need to know one programming language to do their job. Web developers on the other hand need to know at least 3 which is HTML, CSS and Javascript…. but then there’s all the frameworks that even though they’re written in Javascript may as well be their own languages, then there’s SQL and JSON for data, then if you need to work with the backend you might need Java, C#, GO or Python….. if the website is heavy on interactive graphics you now need to know SVG which requires learning a few extra CSS properties like using “fill” instead of “background-color” and “stroke” instead of “border”. Then there’s all the updates we need to keep up with and the way a new version of React or Angular could drop TODAY and tomorrow every job posting will want 5 years experience with that new version. If someone gets really good at C# and find a job as a software developer at a company that uses C# to build their product, that developer gets to code in C# all day every day to build one thing.. we web developers have to think in 3 – 5 languages at once just to build one thing lol.

 

NOTE! There will always be grey areas in this discussion, and people who will have differing opinions. Ultimately it doent label yourself as anything and dont pidgeon hole yourself by what others think you should be, but instead describe yourself with the technologies you use