What is scaffolding?

Scaffolding was a word that scared me when I started software development professionally, a lot of backend software engineers were throwing the word around and I kept looking like a fish out of water. It took a while before I summoned courage to ask what the word means (in relation to software development). I laughed at myself when I got the answer.

In frontend software development, code editors (more like Microsoft Word only its for writing software code) are used, in backend software development, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is used. IDEs are more powerful than code editor, they come with extra features that can speed up development time for backend engineers.

One of the ways IDEs do this is by scaffolding, what this means is that when you want to create a project, after specifying what type of project you want to create, the IDE will automatically create files, folders and a lot of code (that you most likely would have wasted hours writing yourself).

Make no mistake, IDEs can't create softwares on their own, the files, folders and code they generate are simply templates that the software engineer will add, edit and manipulate to create a working software solution.

I laughed at myself because I have been scaffolding for a long time without knowing I was. Even more amusing to me was that my IDE would display "Scaffolding" on the screen when creating my project templates and I didn't register to me what it was actually doing. There are so many fancy buzzwords in tech that have simple meanings, don't be shy to ask.