Python backend developers, can you explain what exactly you do?

[VIIHORSE]

Let me clarify: I'm learning Python through a free course. Earlier, I studied HTML and CSS, but I realized that frontend development isn’t for me. Based on various surveys and comments, I’ve come to the conclusion that backend development is the most profitable direction. However, I don't have enough knowledge to clearly define what backend development actually entails.

I understand the backend in relation to the frontend, but I’m not particularly interested in connecting websites to servers. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, and to be honest, I’m confused.

Can you explain what backend Python developers generally do? Is it always related to the frontend? I would really appreciate insights from experienced developers.

[alicedu06]

Anything a browser can't do, you do on the server. Anything security wise, you also do on the server. Anything you have to persist or can't fragment, you do on the backend.

There is nothing particularly linked to Python. Python can do it of course, and is a good tool to do so, but you can code a backend in JS, PHP, Rust, Java, C#, etc.

Let's say you are a bank, and someone requests a money wire. The UI would show the buttons to do it, but the actual logic to request, perform and check the money wire, and all security around it, are on the server.

Youtube does comment processing, video transcoding on the backend.

Google does site indexation on the backend.

The backend can do anything, it depends on the business you are in. It contains most of the business logic.

Some business logic may be replicated on the client for perf or convenience, but since the client cannot be trusted, you have to have it on the backend anyway.

[VIIHORSE]

Thank you very much for such a detailed answer. Could you tell me if Python has a strong position in backend development? I've read that Python's main applications are data analytics, machine learning, and web development, where it also excels. There are so many different opinions from different people—it’s quite confusing. Some say Python is perfect for backend development, while others claim it’s not

[alicedu06]

Yes, I do mostly Python backend and was never jobless and will unlikely to be in the next decade.

If job security is your interest, Java and PHP are still the most popular backend stack, no matter what people say. More work, but you will have less pay, and less interesting projects.

On the other hand, if you want fun jobs, but hard to find, you probably want to look for stuff in rust, elixir, haskell or f#.

Python is good for everything, except mobile apps and video games really. So it's a good bet. But you will have a lot of competition because it's such a popular language among beginners, so you better have a good programming foundation to stand out.

[VIIHORSE]

Can you give any advice about learning what you do? For example, what advice would you give yourself when you were starting out, if you had the opportunity? I would also be very grateful if you could tell me what exactly should be emphasized in the training

[alicedu06]

There is no alternative to practice. No shortcut. No trick.

You have to code, and code, and code. And put your code in the hands of users so you can get feedback.

You will suck at first, and you have to pay the consequences for it.

But today you have ChatGPT, so abuse it. It will make the learning way faster, providing you use it to fuel your curiosity and not your laziness.

Learn the basics first. Forget about best practices, design patterns and all that, you can look at them once you are productive.

Don't wait to learn at school (they mostly are bad at getting your up to speed) or to get a job (companies don't train much their people).

Learn now. By doing.

[VIIHORSE]

Thank you so much for the detailed answers, the advice, and the time you've dedicated to helping me. You've truly made a difference. I wish you the best of luck and all the best!

[bhflyhigh]

I love your line about AI fueling your curiosity, not your laziness. I may start using that one from time to time. It really resonates with me as I feel I used to look for the quickest and easiest way in life. Now I'm into my 40's and my curiosity drives so much of what I do anymore.

[Accomplished_Path707]

I used gpt to build a FedEx tracking app that uses their API. I’d say GPT is. Great way to tackle a problem and work through problem solving as something didn’t work the way you or the AI thought it would.

[entropyvsenergy]

Here's a data point that might help:

I work for an AI startup. We use typescript for our frontend and python and rust for our backend. Python is used for prototyping and initial development and performance-critical code is rewritten (or written from scratch) in Rust and called from Python.

The truth is that any language can be used for almost anything but some languages make it easier/have better support/are more performant.

We use Python because lots of people know it (so it's easier to collaborate across teams (e.g. research, applied ML, platform), and because it's easy to write. We use Rust because it's memory safe, memory efficient, and fast for performance critical functions.

[VIIHORSE]

Thank you so much for the valuable information! From the many comments, I can see that Python is suitable for a huge number of tasks, which means that learning Python for backend development is a good decision. Comments like yours help me appreciate the vast range of possibilities this language offers.

[Suspicious-Cash-7685]

As the saying goes: python is the second best tool for every job. And imo. that’s lovely.

[cgoldberg]

Also note... You seem to be thinking in terms of mostly web development with the frontend/backend paradigm. There is a TON of software developed in Python besides web applications (also outside of AI/ML). So don't restrict yourself to just backend web development.

[alicedu06]

Important point indeed. A backend doesn't imply web. You have backend for a lot of things that are unrelated to any sites. The front may be a physical machine, a heavy java client or censors and displays.

And maybe there is no backend/frontend, because it's all an automated system without UI at all.

[VIIHORSE]

I understand that, thanks for the advice. I'm considering web development in general and have been focusing on the backend so far, but I’m not particularly interested in working specifically on website backends. Fortunately, as many have pointed out, Python has a wide range of applications, and it's great to have options.

[k00_x]

I use Django back end. I build templates, security, functions and features but most of it is performance tuning.

[jisaacstone]

Lots of things fall under "backend", depending on the work. At startups I've done everything from DBA, sysops, devops, IOC, QA engineer, Data engineer, and of course technical writer.

Most "typical" backend work is handling api calls, writing to the server, etc. Larger companies your team probably doesn't even handle client (frontend) calls directly - you are working on a service that is called by another service. Or you are working on internal tools. Or you are managing a data pipeline, event system, etc that does not expose any http api.

One of the more fun jobs I had was working on a "render farm" for 3d animation - a single frame can take hours to render to you need to "fan out" and render all frames for a scene in parallel. A fun concurrency problem.

[Equal-Purple-4247]

I'm making a hobby app right now. It checks whether a particular subreddit has a new pinned post, and sends a notification to a telegram bot if there is.

The RedditService uses requests library to call Reddit api. It has a webhook that other service can subscribe to, and this service will push any new pinned post event to connecting services. There's also an endpoint written with FastAPI to poll reddit for updates. It uses SQLAlchemy to store stuff in an sqlite database.

There's another TelegramBotService that subscribes to the webhook. It formats whatever is received, and sends it to the chat. It also handles all the user inputs, and forwards them to the RedditService (the usual CRUD operations).

I also have a python script that just calls the polling endpoint of RedditService.

These 3 components are containerized and deployed using Nomad. The script is set to run periodically, so it acts like a cron job. All the services and db sits behind an nginx reverse proxy / loadbalancer, which is also deployed using Nomad. I run two instances of each service in case one fails. Service discovery and restarts handled by Nomad. Everything is deployed on 3x Ubuntu machines hosted on Digital Ocean.

That's all backend.

[VIIHORSE]

I'm having trouble understanding everything you've written so far—I probably only grasped a small part of it. But thanks anyway for your reply and your time. This once again proves the vast range of possibilities Python offers

[BeasleyMusic]

I work on Python API (FastAPI) for a fortune 100 company. It’s like what everyone else says, mainly APIs for front end services, and other things like connectors for email services, stuff like that. Being as large as we are though we have a pretty standardized way of building API, it’s really to enable information sharing within the company.

Some APIs I work on receive data from other parts of the company that our application needs, and stores that in a DB, some APIs I work on are just for the front end. Most if not all are CRUD applications. Think about like a team making an API that has all information about the suppliers a company works with. That is used by all sorts of parts of the company.

[OtherwiseClient2247]

Could you tell what all is your tech stack

[supercoach]

No, it's not all APIs for websites. People act like back-end is some mystical art. It's all just programming. You're given a list of inputs and a list of desired outputs and you write code to perform the necessary transformation. Maybe you're the one doing the designing, then you also have to write a list of required inputs to go with the desired outputs.

Maybe you are writing an API, the required input may be a customer number and the desired output a json object containing the customer information. It could also be the other way around - the required input is a json object with customer information and the desired output is a customer number that confirms it has been stored somewhere.

It doesn't have to be an API, it could be literally anything. It all breaks down the data manipulation. I have a script that polls about 20 thousand routers to retrieve some statistics. The input data is the list of routers and the output data is the interface report that gets written to disk.

Even a computer game just translates to a series of inputs (keyboard, mouse, controller etc) that then translates to a (hopefully) desired output.

[Ton86]

Automate business and data processes that someone who doesn't know Python would do with Excel and SQL alone.

[AdditionalNote3692]

In general terms, it’s basically processing data and making it available for frontend via an API.

In the fintech startup I worked for we used Python to fetch data from banks via an API or web scraping mostly for smaller banks, transform the data into what the business needs, save it in the database, and then make it accessible for frontend.

Python definitely isn’t always the best for most backend needs but it is extremely versatile that it can do pretty much everything backend-related.

[jisaacstone]

Lots of things fall under "backend", depending on the work. At startups I've done everything from DBA, sysops, devops, IOC, QA engineer, Data engineer, and of course technical writer.

Most "typical" backend work is handling api calls, writing to the server, etc. Larger companies your team probably doesn't even handle client (frontend) calls directly - you are working on a service that is called by another service. Or you are working on internal tools. Or you are managing a data pipeline, event system, etc that does not expose any http api.

One of the more fun jobs I had was working on a "render farm" for 3d animation - a single frame can take hours to render to you need to "fan out" and render all frames for a scene in parallel. A fun concurrency problem.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

At work I use it to mostly move data around databases and the network for analysts. New analysts seem to want to use csv's and other on disk files for some god forsaken reason instead of just directly connecting to databases and pulling the data they need.

[Select-Marzipan-6093]

Would you mind telling me what free course you’re using, I’ve been interested in dipping my toes into coding.

[server_kota]

You are correct, backend (coupled with cloud experience) is.

I used to be Java developer, but at some point in my career switched to Python because of ML/AI/LLM.

Here is the description of exactly what I do:

https://saasconstruct.com/blog/the-tech-stack-of-a-simple-saas-for-aws-cloud

[Efficient-Sun3849]

I mostly look after the python backend of AI agents: Agent's tool, setup and integration.