App Developer VS Web Designer VS UX Designer VS Web Developer VS Full Stack Developer: What are the differences?

1K Blog Marathon: Day 28

Now that you are graduate of college, or just been laid off, or even wondering of changing career and moving into IT, you may come across these different job titles. But what are the difference really – aside from the spelling itself?

Before our college graduation, I’ve been crafting my Resume just preparing for any Programming related job post that I may come across. But when I searched for Programming positions in multiple job-posting sites, I get a lot of job titles – App Developer, Web Developer, UX, UI, Programmer, Developer, Software Engineer – the list goes on. Looking on each post, I saw similarities in requirements, so I thought “What are the differences? And what the heck is Full-Stack?”

App Developer

Average Salary (PH): ₱442,186 (US): $107,000 (source: PayScale)

Creating new software and maintaining existing ones are the main task of app developer. Such software includes Desktop and Mobile Apps. These are either stand-alone program or third party application for other existing software. They are often members of the Research and Development team of a company. Common languages includes Visual Basic, C#, Java, Android (Java/Kotlin), iOS (Swift) and Python. They are what I called “the geeks”, eating code for breakfast, debugging on lunch, and not taking a dinner nor sleep (I’m exaggerating! ^_^)

Web Designer

Average Salary (PH): ₱264,112 (US): $52, 691 (Source: glassdoor.com)

Okay, to clarify things, they are not programmers. It may help if they know a little HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but their primary task is revolving around Photoshop, Illustrator and other graphics software. They created website mock-ups as per specifications. They understand the psyche of what’s pleasant to the eyes. Sometimes they work hand in hand with…

UX Designer

Average Salary (PH): ₱371,195 (US): $80,928 (Source: skillcrush.com)

If Web Designers are graphic designers in nature, UX Designers focuses on UX, or User Experience. They are more on the psychology of the software, they take into consideration the functionality of the design rather than the overall appeal of the product. They focus more in data and user response, how they use the product and how to improve certain loopholes.

Web Developer

Average Salary (PH): ₱360,000 (US): $59,520 (Source: payscale.com)

After the mock-up of the Web Designer, the Webbies are the ones who plot the design and turn it into a website. It could be hard-coded, drag-and-drop, or mix. Popular tools are text editors, frameworks, plugins and the likes. They apply the SEO techniques for rankings. Common languages were HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Python and ASP. Frameworks includes but not limited to Bootstrap, Material UI, Semantic UI, WordPress, Joomla and the likes.

Full Stack Developer

Average Salary (PH): ₱522,332 (US): $78,527 (Source: payscale.com)

The Jack-of-all-Trades! They can work on any part of the development team, and often times they finish a task or project using different approaches and different languages joined together to build a solution. For example, in a task to automate a repetitive process, they may use UiPath to automate, custom software to process and even a website to pull data.

Whatever job position you may be in, don’t forget to follow excellence. See you again tomorrow for another marathon! Thank you folks!