React is out and no one should learn it? Really? Something like half the Javascript job listings mention React ... but someone trying to get a job should not learn it?
Now to be fair I haven't job hunted in about half a year, so the market may have changed a little now that I have my (React-based) job ... but it hasn't changed so much that the most popular web framework has somehow become dead tech.
The point isn't that React is dead tech. React is practically every AIs front-end library of choice. I think the idea is AI is too good at it and you won't get a good ROI learning it. Learn fundamentals instead and when folks get sick of React because AI loves it, you'll be ready.
We would have. IF a typical C codebase in its early years sucked as much as some AI generated codebases do today.
But instead, humans preferred the productivity AND the readability AND maintainability that elevated us above assembly. Maybe AI-generated code will get there also.
I’ve lived through a few. The internet came and stayed. The bubble just wiped out the speculators, but the internet is bigger than ever. We will be using LLMs for a long time. The only way that’s not true is if a superior replacement comes along.
Some people I know also seem to believe this? Like all the AI providers are going to go bankrupt and we'll just go back to what there was before? Do they not realize that indeed the productivity gains are there?
Sure, there's a lot to be debated about how this fell on many people's laps, on how they are being asked to do more, with the same pay and sometimes putting in more hours. These are pressing issues that have emerged as a natural (or, well, maybe forced for some) consequence of a complete shakeup in the world in general. But I don't think society (i.e. most people) will go back to what was before unless we actually have some form of devastation that really physically prevents us from doing so.
If OpenAI and Anthropic and what have you go bankrupt, others will continue. Maybe the economics will look a bit different, but to think we will just go back to what it was seems, to me, completely nonsensical. But maybe I'm the one spouting nonsense. We'll see in a few years...
Funny, I went to read the article, and I found it a lot less defensive than replies such as yours. The author even makes some good points.
The main issue for front end development is that companies (particularly large ones) have been releasing shitty broken UI/UX for so long that this stuff became the norm.
Either way the article does not even explain what "blows over" mean. A lot of people seem to be fearfully reacting to the title alone.
Part of the current environment is the hype around how far this can go. Investment in anything else is rough because of the ballooned hardware costs and the fear that AI will eat your lunch. That's not a reality necessarily. That part of it could easily change if the mood of the investment class changes.
As far as what AI actually provides, at the end of the day its cheaper software faster (or that's the promise). You still need to build products and maybe you can do that with less folks now. You're not writing assembly today. The machine does it. But you're still working on software. Maybe with AI you're programming less and working on UX more. Is that earth shattering change?
We've yet to hit a point where you any of the big software companies have been overthrown by an AI startup... Whats the revolution really? Its captured the mindshare of the industry but we're at a point of being practically disgusted by AI products already.
Things won't literally go back to 2019. But there could certainly be a return to normalcy in store.
>The machine does it. But you're still working on software. Maybe with AI you're programming less and working on UX more. Is that earth shattering change?
Well, it cuts both ways, the other earth shattering change is Designers taking on more programming/engineering work.
Bro, I think you are too deep into tech twitter (X). React is still king , almost every job opening for web needs it. Even the ones at OpenAI and Anthropic.
I think that LLMs will be just another tool like linters or build tools. Enterprise and tech startups will still need custom solutions and people accountable for keeping them afloat. However the guy who got by making small business websites from templates will probably have a hard time. Between squarespace, shopify, and LLMs there just isn't a reason to pay more than a few bucks for a website for your business.
llms / ai have already changed the landscape of tech, it's reaching into almost all industries.
a good comparison is like using a sword vs a gun. ofc in certain scenarios the sword is going to be the right tool / better than a gun. but 99.99% of the time you're gonna want to use the gun and refusing to do so bc it's different or bc you mastered the sword and have some pride isn't going to end well for you.
i find coding agents etc to be really useful and am excited about it. the thing i'm waiting to blow over is for a good work / life / human centric balance to be accepted as the norm. i'm tired of coding agents / ai being the reason behind "if you aren't shipping a critical feature like handling payments in 3 days, you're trash"
Dude, it's not 2021 anymore. You can't just yell a big, bold, name like racist and expect it to stick or cause any impact. Everyone got burned out in 2021 of the million -ists, and the 2024 election showed among other things that the name calling has zero effect.
The world belongs to those who can actually explain why any particular opinion is a bad thing, or conflicts with values that the reader may otherwise hold, not those who can accuse with a cheap label.
I have to say, the other day I tested out ChatGPT sites. Around a year ago I built a website for a rehearsal space - a booking system app - and spent a whole day with ChatGPT building it. It was janky, ugly, and getting there was a process. FWIW, traditional systems dev is what I learned, but I know fuck all about front-end, and I'm not too well versed on web dev in general. I did have to get under the hood and do some coding after I ran out of usage with ChatGPT back then.
But with sites? I made a big picture spec sheet, and asked ChatGPT to expand on that. Then I fed that spec sheet into sites. 30 minutes later it spit out a perfectly working site of what I had tried to make a year ago. Not only that, it was much richer, and had more features. I asked for around 10 changes and new features, and all but one worked flawlessly. One time it managed to break functionality, but it was swiftly fixed. I didn't write or edit a single line of code. NOT A SINGLE ONE.
I've previously been on the buying side, and this was a website which could have easily ended up costing $10k-$15k with all the functionality. If not more. And I ended up getting that, for my measly $20 subscription.
Web dev as a career is not dead, or dying, but I predict that A LOT of the people that would make those $0 - $10k sites are going to have a tough time ahead.
A year ago, I asked ChatGPT to design me a 3D model for a wallet, the kind you can stick to the back of a phone with a magnet. It screwed it up over and over, never got to anything usable.
Last week I tried again, just explaining in words what to do, and it made what I had in my mind.
For websites, it's over. Any kind of brochure/simple restaurant booking site, that was easy years ago and trivial now. SaaS is going next, of course there's a lot of types of SaaS but your average "web implementation of commonly needed service" is now very easily copied with AI.
Anything like a task list or information management system with no particular constraints in terms of performance or scale, you can just make an AI customize for you.
> Around a year ago [...] It was janky, ugly, and getting there was a process.
Last December/January seems to have been the tipping point from too flawed to be really useful into something pretty good for dev work, so this seems about right.
Hardware is going to get cheaper (as it always does over the long term) and even if the commercial models enshittify¹ to something too contaminated by ads to be bearable the open models won't. We're not going back.
For now it looks like the ability to lead these tools to good solutions is valuable. I guess we'll see if it carries on so. Not much we can do if it isn't except move with the times.
¹ I'm actually fairly optimistic about that at the moment because so far we are the customers.
Most web traffic is robotic. Apps gatekeep and monitor our access. The internet is hostile to humans now. Nothing about the internet is evolving in the direction of a structure created by humans for humans.
As an example, a doctor submitting a prescription over the internet during someone’s visit. I’m sure that was in someone’s presentation as a futuristic feat the internet would help accomplish one day.
The internet is used on constant basis that we don’t even realize anymore.
Frontend development will be the first that will be completely replaced by agentic development where nobody needs to see any code at all. Its already possible and many companies are having this way of working quite succesfully. The quality is already better than 99% of what frontend engineers can achieve. Speed is just insane. I can create any ui. Whether it's web or platform specific. There are hardly any limitations. Frameworks are still useful. But I expect them to become less important.
What remains important as a dev is system knowledge. Understanding of how systems are tight together. The principles of distributed systems, security, prompt engineering, agentic automation. And that kind of knowledge.
Code syntax is from the old era. Maybe there is a niche for it. But not for the majority.
Right. My clients now get iOS, macOS, Win32 (or whatever you call it), and Android apps… for free. Same price they paid before, and now they just get it all.
I wish I could agree, but AI (as LLMs) is absolutely not blowing over. Even if frontier labs crash and burn I'm already running a model that's maybe only a month behind them, locally, in my house. Last year this was impossible within a reasonable budget. Next year it's going to be better and cheaper to do. My phone can already run models as capable as last year's. Horse has left the barn.
1) Become world class experts in one thing
2) Become full on invested in LLMs learn on how to match general intelligence on business requirements (Evals, isolation, judging,etc..) I think this will probably be still 5 years
3) Get ready to do something in real life.
That's like being the amish of web workers. Good for you if you can, you may very well fit a useful niche. But most of the developers probably don't even want this.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 22.4 ms ] threadReact is out and no one should learn it? Really? Something like half the Javascript job listings mention React ... but someone trying to get a job should not learn it?
Now to be fair I haven't job hunted in about half a year, so the market may have changed a little now that I have my (React-based) job ... but it hasn't changed so much that the most popular web framework has somehow become dead tech.
But instead, humans preferred the productivity AND the readability AND maintainability that elevated us above assembly. Maybe AI-generated code will get there also.
Some people I know also seem to believe this? Like all the AI providers are going to go bankrupt and we'll just go back to what there was before? Do they not realize that indeed the productivity gains are there?
Sure, there's a lot to be debated about how this fell on many people's laps, on how they are being asked to do more, with the same pay and sometimes putting in more hours. These are pressing issues that have emerged as a natural (or, well, maybe forced for some) consequence of a complete shakeup in the world in general. But I don't think society (i.e. most people) will go back to what was before unless we actually have some form of devastation that really physically prevents us from doing so.
If OpenAI and Anthropic and what have you go bankrupt, others will continue. Maybe the economics will look a bit different, but to think we will just go back to what it was seems, to me, completely nonsensical. But maybe I'm the one spouting nonsense. We'll see in a few years...
The main issue for front end development is that companies (particularly large ones) have been releasing shitty broken UI/UX for so long that this stuff became the norm.
Either way the article does not even explain what "blows over" mean. A lot of people seem to be fearfully reacting to the title alone.
As far as what AI actually provides, at the end of the day its cheaper software faster (or that's the promise). You still need to build products and maybe you can do that with less folks now. You're not writing assembly today. The machine does it. But you're still working on software. Maybe with AI you're programming less and working on UX more. Is that earth shattering change?
We've yet to hit a point where you any of the big software companies have been overthrown by an AI startup... Whats the revolution really? Its captured the mindshare of the industry but we're at a point of being practically disgusted by AI products already.
Things won't literally go back to 2019. But there could certainly be a return to normalcy in store.
Well, it cuts both ways, the other earth shattering change is Designers taking on more programming/engineering work.
i've held on hope for a year, but can no longer
we're a non-unionized industry up against very powerful people who want to deskill the field
i want hope, if you have any send my way.. unfortunately things are not looking good
And have tools to do so
a good comparison is like using a sword vs a gun. ofc in certain scenarios the sword is going to be the right tool / better than a gun. but 99.99% of the time you're gonna want to use the gun and refusing to do so bc it's different or bc you mastered the sword and have some pride isn't going to end well for you.
i find coding agents etc to be really useful and am excited about it. the thing i'm waiting to blow over is for a good work / life / human centric balance to be accepted as the norm. i'm tired of coding agents / ai being the reason behind "if you aren't shipping a critical feature like handling payments in 3 days, you're trash"
Dude, it's not 2021 anymore. You can't just yell a big, bold, name like racist and expect it to stick or cause any impact. Everyone got burned out in 2021 of the million -ists, and the 2024 election showed among other things that the name calling has zero effect.
The world belongs to those who can actually explain why any particular opinion is a bad thing, or conflicts with values that the reader may otherwise hold, not those who can accuse with a cheap label.
But with sites? I made a big picture spec sheet, and asked ChatGPT to expand on that. Then I fed that spec sheet into sites. 30 minutes later it spit out a perfectly working site of what I had tried to make a year ago. Not only that, it was much richer, and had more features. I asked for around 10 changes and new features, and all but one worked flawlessly. One time it managed to break functionality, but it was swiftly fixed. I didn't write or edit a single line of code. NOT A SINGLE ONE.
I've previously been on the buying side, and this was a website which could have easily ended up costing $10k-$15k with all the functionality. If not more. And I ended up getting that, for my measly $20 subscription.
Web dev as a career is not dead, or dying, but I predict that A LOT of the people that would make those $0 - $10k sites are going to have a tough time ahead.
A year ago, I asked ChatGPT to design me a 3D model for a wallet, the kind you can stick to the back of a phone with a magnet. It screwed it up over and over, never got to anything usable.
Last week I tried again, just explaining in words what to do, and it made what I had in my mind.
For websites, it's over. Any kind of brochure/simple restaurant booking site, that was easy years ago and trivial now. SaaS is going next, of course there's a lot of types of SaaS but your average "web implementation of commonly needed service" is now very easily copied with AI.
Anything like a task list or information management system with no particular constraints in terms of performance or scale, you can just make an AI customize for you.
Last December/January seems to have been the tipping point from too flawed to be really useful into something pretty good for dev work, so this seems about right.
Hardware is going to get cheaper (as it always does over the long term) and even if the commercial models enshittify¹ to something too contaminated by ads to be bearable the open models won't. We're not going back.
For now it looks like the ability to lead these tools to good solutions is valuable. I guess we'll see if it carries on so. Not much we can do if it isn't except move with the times.
¹ I'm actually fairly optimistic about that at the moment because so far we are the customers.
Most web traffic is robotic. Apps gatekeep and monitor our access. The internet is hostile to humans now. Nothing about the internet is evolving in the direction of a structure created by humans for humans.
Perhaps the disruption is to something even worse.
The internet accomplished the mission.
As an example, a doctor submitting a prescription over the internet during someone’s visit. I’m sure that was in someone’s presentation as a futuristic feat the internet would help accomplish one day.
The internet is used on constant basis that we don’t even realize anymore.
The infrastructure is an extraordinary and priceless human accomplishment.
For decades, web content helped and informed people, and brought them together.
The user-hostile actors and are now too numerous and powerful. The parasites are killing their host.
1) Become world class experts in one thing 2) Become full on invested in LLMs learn on how to match general intelligence on business requirements (Evals, isolation, judging,etc..) I think this will probably be still 5 years 3) Get ready to do something in real life.
It won't be 2019, that I am sure. There are brain worms around, sure. But this genie is not going back in the box.