Front End vs. Back End (zellwk.com)

The article oversimplifies back end. If all it did was communicate between the database and front end then there are no difficulties. It would simply translate in two directions. In that case, front end would be much harder since it would be necessary to do all the processing there if back end only translates.

I'm a backend developer. I like the switchboard analogy, but I usually think of myself as a plumber, piping information from one place to another.