> I think I understand but anyone should free to correct me. In every single other environment there is little to no distinction between "front end" and "back end". In fact, other than the web, the ui is a library within the language a developer chooses while in the web the scripting language is secondary to the ui.
It depends. A desktop application may have a backend, like a central web service to connect to. Even if it doesn't, there is still likely to be a logical separation of layers which may or may not be in different languages (think c++ backend with a c#/xaml front end).
In those situations, does the c++ service render the xaml or provide the c# to execute to provide the xaml? Or does it provide a shared storage/events/peer resolution/info collecting. Usually a server provides something much different than a web server does
C#/XAML on the front-end could mean that .Net/WPF is rendering the XAML and wiring up the C#. The C# might do little more than handle events triggered by the user interface and update the user interface in response to events triggered by the back end.
As the potential capabilities in front-end web development increase, the differences between web development and "desktop" software development are reduced, because web developers find themselves facing more and more of the same questions software developers have always faced when dealing with distributed software architectures at scale.
My point exactly. Spas are going in that direction. "Firebase" allows them to be "serverless" sincebthey have a shared database to write to and read from
These concepts may hurt or cripple early developers since html/css is obvious and easy while the concept that globals, scope and the database is in an entirely seperate location seems odd. What makes it worse is that xmlhttp requests arent very kind.
The concept of the single page app and "serverless" architecture seems to be a fools errand to build (or influence big names to build) complex html applications without the need to spend money or wrappers to bridge the gap. Meteor, northwest.js and electron are celebrated for attempting to accomplish these goals.