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When I have to explain my job to non-technical people I usually say I build apps "like gmail" not websites "like blogs and company websites"

I used an example. An app, that she's familiar with, is Gmail. I said our product is not a desktop application, like Outlook, but for the web. What we're going to do is mostly display static content, refresh the screen on navigation circa 2002, etc. So there are some parts where we need dynamicity, like our menu builder, but for the most part we don't need anything complex. As a result JQuery is fine.

For me the distinction is what the JS is used for.

* If you use FE JS to implement any of your sites functionality then you have an app.

* If you only use FE JS for just presentation logic then you have a website.