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saintpetejackboy t1_j6a6w26 wrote

Only some code is presented to the client on the front end. A lot of the heavy lifting is done on the backend using code that the browser is unaware of.

In addition, most interactions you have with websites involve databases of information. Without having your own similar mirror of data, the code is largely functionless.

Many years ago, web development classes would often have people build a "pizza ordering website", using HTML and eventually CSS - form fields, etc. - but those are just a facade... They rarely actually did anything tangible or saved data anywhere until you got further.

Copying the source code of most websites is going to give you fairly poor results, go ahead and try it, it is basically just stealing the non-working pizza ordering UI, at best case scenario.

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pieapplekitten t1_j6ai2o5 wrote

As a computer science student, we still make those basic front end websites. Later on, we move up to incorporating databases. Your answer is spot on.

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StampedeJonesPS4 t1_j6bpgk5 wrote

Upvotes for the both of ya. The answer was great and your confirmation made it all the better. Cheers.

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13lettersinhere OP t1_j6cfvez wrote

Bro forgot to explain like I’m 5

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AgentScreech t1_j6crng6 wrote

It's like if you stole a menu from a restaurant. You would know what it was supposed to make, but you don't have the kitchen or the cooks.

When you go to a website, you interact with the frontend (menu in this analogy). The "backend" is the thing that processes your request (kitchen) and returns the result to the frontend to be presented

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oldmansalvatore t1_j6clkdi wrote

Any website or app's source code is split into parts that you can access on your computer or browser (aka the client), and other parts that only exist on another large computer that your computer talks to (aka the server).

The parts on your client browser usually only outline what the website should look like, and how your browser should talk to the server computer. The real data you would access, and any calculations or other complicated stuff on your website, is largely stored and done on the server using the source code on the server.

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