Back or Front End?

My current projects, my job search, and a conversation I had today all have got me thinking about this question lately. Which part of a project do I like to work on the most? What kind of team can I best contribute to?

I get enjoyment out of both but lean towards back end where all the server and database stuff lives. I guess one part is the correctness of it. You can pretty easily quantify whether something works and how well. Does it pass all the tests? Does it fit the requirements and constraints? Is performance good enough? It’s all generally clear-cut yes or no where a yes means an instant dopamine hit for the programmer.

Sure, there are ways to quantify how well a front end does its job. It’s more of a science though. You have to go out and run tests and surveys with people, look at analytics, that sort of thing.

Back end is also just a lot more fun to think about in my opinion. I’d love to get into the behind the scenes of something massive like Youtube or Spotify just to see how they’ve got everything wired up. Front end to me has less of a wonder to it, but maybe that’s just my inexperience talking.

I could go on a little longer but I’m curious to learn about other takes on this instead. I’m sure there’s things to appreciate about both that I’ve overlooked.