Web development is fun again • Hacker News Board

Re: Web development is fun again

#71

Post by torben-friis » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

alecsm wrote: post #60

torben-friis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using your ISP DNS? I’m in Spain as well and I can access the link just fine.

I'm using Cloudflare's. I don't know how this blocking works. A couple minutes ago I could access this link but now I can't. It's happening with another website too. It's like an intermittent blocking today.

Real Madrid's on today, so it must be LaLiga's bullshit once again.

If it helps, 8.8.8.8 is not giving me issues, not sure if it's something other than DNS breaking on your side though.

Re: Web development is fun again

#72

Post by beaker52 » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #69

beaker52 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Replying to myself because hn) That’s not the only difference at all. A good use of an LLM might be to ask it what the difference between using an LLM and writing code for a compiler is.

Equally a good use for a legacy compiler that compiles a legacy language. Granted, you are going to have to write a lot more boilerplate to see it function (that being the difference, after all), but the outcome will be the same either way. It's all just 1s and 0s at the end of the day.

Sorry friend, if you can’t identify the important differences between a compiler and an LLM, either intentionally or unintentionally (I can’t tell), then I must question the value of whatever you have to say on the topic.

Re: Web development is fun again

#73

Post by xnx » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #43

AI makes finishing projects easier. But I would steer away from starting them. In order for me to be comfortable with a code base and consider it mine I need to have written the foundation, not merely reviewed in. Once the pillars are there, LLMs do make further development faster and I can concentrate on fun details (like tinkering with CSS or thinking about some very specific details).

> But I would steer away from starting them.

I find just the opposite. Before, starting from nothing was a huge impediment. Now you can have a working prototype and start iterating right away. If you figur e out that you've gone down the wrong path, there's little remorse in tossing it out and starting over.

Re: Web development is fun again

#74

Post by xnx » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

Strong agree. The modern web world is clearly better but we traded a whole lot of complexity for a little bit of benefit (and frequently regressed on speed). The microservices and javascript framework wars were the dark ages.

Re: Web development is fun again

#75

Post by phplovesong » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

Going in 2026, the frontend has many good options, but AI is not one of them.

We have many typesafe (no, not TypeScript!) options with rock solid dev tooling, and fast compilers.

AI is just a badaid, its not the road you want to travel.

Re: Web development is fun again

#76

Post by phplovesong » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Web development is fun again

#77

Post by mmargerum » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

Really like using alpine with a classical JS server rendered stack too. Most crud apps don’t need a spa app and now you are working out of one code base again. Codex chews through this kind of code

Re: Web development is fun again

#78

Post by barrkel » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

Tailwind CSS has also been super useful. A vocabulary for style colocated with the elements works far better than an ever growing list of continuously overidden rules.

Re: Web development is fun again

#79

Post by oliwarner » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

> I feel like I can manage the entire stack again - with confidence.

By not managing anything? Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I understand it. I've found myself looking at new stacks and tech, not knowing what I didn't know, and wondering where to start. But if you skip these fundamentals of the modern dev cycle, what happens when the LLM fails?

Re: Web development is fun again

#80

Post by yomismoaqui » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #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 signific…

It's a little shameful but I still struggle when centering divs on a page. Yes, I know about flexbox for more than a decade but always have to search to remember how it is done.

So instead of refreshing that less used knowledge I just ask the AI to do it for me. The implications of this vs searching MDN Docs is another conversation to have.