Brief History

Human existence is characterized by the level of innovation in a period of time. The beginning of civilization was measured by our ability to carve weapons out of stone. Fast forward many years to date and our existence depends on our ability to program machines. Every man made thing we see today is an improvement from a previous one. For example, the invention of the bicycle, to the car, to the self-driving car.

History books have evidence of society in the old ages. Humans lived in small villages or tribes and females were responsible for tasks such as gathering berries, preparing food, and nurturing children. On the other hand, males had the difficult task of going out of the village territory to hunt for food. This required tremendous strength and it was a measure of power. The most dominant males were usually acknowledged as the head of the tribe. I believe this structure of society is what paved the way for gender roles and classification.

Frontend and Backend Development

Software development is the creation of computer applications for end users or clients. This requires extensive knowledge of different technologies that make up one whole application. Software applications are a combination of two components, which are the front end and the back end. The front end is the visual aspect of a particular application such as a mobile app or a website. It is the part that us humans can see and interact with in order to make use of the system, also known as a user interface or 'UI' for short. Front end software development requires creativity and an eye for aesthetic because the aim is to engage users with interactive user interfaces.

Backend development is the process of building the non visual aspect of an application, the skeleton, the part that makes it functional. The backend connects with the user interface to bring it to life, otherwise it would just be stagnant. This requires the ability to apply logic to handle business problems. An example is creating a post to a social media platform. Backend developers need to be highly analytical and methodical because the process requires a certain muscle, much like the hunters of the past.

To compare these different times in history, the male hunters would bring their caught prey and surrender it to the nurturing females to prepare the food. In software development, the backend developers have to program a well functioning system that can interact with the user interface that is built by the front end developer. Just to clear things up, backend and frontend development are gender neutral — anyone can become either regardless of their gender identity.

As humanity progresses as a species, we can learn a lot from our ancestors about collaboration and innovative thinking. The first man to invent a spear from stone was innovative. The first man to discover fire was innovative, and the first man to land on the moon was equally innovative. What's next?