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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

1–10 of 658 posts

Re: Web development is fun again

#2
honestly, with LLMs, everything is fun again.

embedded dev with a billion toolchains, GPU development with each vendors bespoke API, ffmpeg with its billion parameters - if anything, you could say LLMs bailed us out of the impending ultra-specialization. without LLMs, we might be facing a world where 30% of the workforce is in software dev.

i am keeping my eyes peeled on vibe-coding PCB layouts and schematics. a lot of eyes in that direction already but its still early.

Re: Web development is fun again

#3

honestly, with LLMs, everything is fun again. embedded dev with a billion toolchains, GPU development with each vendors bespoke API, ffmpeg with its billion parameters - if anything, you could say LLMs bailed us out of the impending ultra-specialization. without LLMs, we might be facing a world where 30% of the workforce is in software dev. i am keeping my eyes peeled on vibe-coding PCB layouts and schematics. a lot…

I agree with this. I've been able to tackle projects I've been wanting to for ages with LLMs because they let me focus on abstractions first and get over the friction of starting the project.

Once I get my footing, I can use them to generate more and more specialized code and ultimately get to a place where the code is good.

Re: Web development is fun again

#4

honestly, with LLMs, everything is fun again. embedded dev with a billion toolchains, GPU development with each vendors bespoke API, ffmpeg with its billion parameters - if anything, you could say LLMs bailed us out of the impending ultra-specialization. without LLMs, we might be facing a world where 30% of the workforce is in software dev. i am keeping my eyes peeled on vibe-coding PCB layouts and schematics. a lot…

“LLMs bailed us out of the impending ultra-specialization” - well said!

Re: Web development is fun again

#7
Something I like about our weird new LLM-assisted world is the number of people I know who are coding again, having mostly stopped as they moved into management roles or lost their personal side project time to becoming parents.

AI assistance means you can get something useful done in half an hour, or even while you are doing other stuff. You don't need to carve out 2-4 hours to ramp up any more.

If you have significant previous coding experience - even if it's a few years stale - you can drive these things extremely effectively. Especially if you have management experience, quite a lot of which transfers to "managing" coding agents (communicate clearly, set achievable goals, provide all relevant context.)

Re: Web development is fun again

#9
post #5

Ironically I'm thinking the exact opposite. Now I can build stuff without dealing with the chaos in the frontend frameworks ecosystem...

theres a fun "K-shaped" optionality with LLMs: on one hand, its possible to deal with otherwise large API surfaces.

but on the other hand, you can 'go oldschool' but with the hot new tools: install ubuntu, launch claude with yolo mode, and just tell it what you want as if it were a sysadmin from the early 2000s/late 90s.

both roads very reasonable, but that the old way of doing things is new again is interesting.

Re: Web development is fun again

#10
Strong agree! Forget all those studies that say “but developers are slower” or whatever — I’m actually building way more hobby projects and having way more fun now. And work is way more fun and easier. And my node_modules folder size is dropping like crazy!
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