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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

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Re: Web development is fun again

#81

Post by mentos »

ori_b wrote: post #23
webdevver wrote: post #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…

I don't get it. What part of the process do you enjoy? Do you also enjoy hiring a taskrabbit to go hiking for you, taking photos along the way?

I’m just looking to make pizza not smelt the ore for the oven I’m going to cook it in.

Re: Web development is fun again

#82

Post by barrkel »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #80
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.

Try tailwind. Very amenable to LLM generation since it's effectively a micro language, and being colocated with the document elements, it doesn't need a big context to zip together.

Re: Web development is fun again

#83

Post by simonw »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #80
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.

Hah, centering divs with flexbox is one of my uses for this too! I can never remember the syntax off the top of my head, but if I say "center it with flexbox" it spits out exactly the right code every time.

If I do this a few more times it might even stick in my head.

Re: Web development is fun again

#84

Post by ori_b »

mentos wrote: post #81
ori_b wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. What part of the process do you enjoy? Do you also enjoy hiring a taskrabbit to go hiking for you, taking photos along the way?

I’m just looking to make pizza not smelt the ore for the oven I’m going to cook it in.

Why make pizza when you can order it? As far as I can tell, there's not much enjoyment of making being had.

Enjoying having is fine too, but let's at least be honest about it.

I enjoy looking at photos people took on hikes, but I don't call it hiking.

Re: Web development is fun again

#85

Post by vorticalbox »

timenotwasted wrote: post #13
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…

You just described my experience exactly. Especially the personal side project time as a parent. Now after bed I can tinker and have fun again because I can move so much more quickly and see real progress even with only an hour or two to spend every few days.

I’ve noticed this too at work.

If keep the change’s focused I can iterate far faster with ideas because it can type faster than I can.

Re: Web development is fun again

#86

Post by tracerbulletx »

CrossVR wrote: post #25

> On the frontend, you have build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images… LLMs are successful in webdev because of unnecessary frameworks being piled on top of each other more in the name of job security than technical necessity.

You're completely free to write software targeting the browser platform without a framework, build pipeline, and bundler. Those things exist for a reason though and running a large project without them quickly runs into worse problems.

Re: Web development is fun again

#87

Post by lifetimerubyist »

no_wizard wrote: post #29
lifetimerubyist wrote: post #18

When stuff was getting too complicated, I looked for ways to make things simpler. Developers have spent decades trying to figure out ways to make things simpler, less code the better, only to throw it all out the window because chatbot go brrrrrr.

It’s because business demand speed and shipping over other concerns. We had to fight hard for proper quality controls in the face of the LLM coding assistance boom where I work. These are great tools but they have limits and can lead to poor engineering hygiene quite quickly. It took a major issue being attributed to having too much trust in these tools before we were able to enforce better hygiene with them

Yeah. I love programming. I even love the business side where you solve real problems for people.

What I don't love is the constant pressure to just deliver faster and faster. So forcing these chatbots on us fill a need for the CEOs and manager types that just want to DELIVER DELIVER DELIVER, but the benefit for the people that are forced to use them are marginal at best. There are some valid use cases for LLM-based tools, but businesses mostly aren't interested in those because it doesn't make line go up. Streamlining operations? Nah. Shove a Chatbot where it doesn't belong so you can try to get a billion dollar investment? NOW WE ARE COOKING

C-suites and managers don't give a shit about quality unless they feel the pain. That's the most important thing I've learned. If you can find a way to push the pain up to the people that make the decisions, the more likely they are incentivised to improve it. It doesn't matter if you see a problem that takes 2 days to fix coming a year away - they do not care until the application crashes because of it.

Office politics sucks.

Re: Web development is fun again

#88

Post by kome »

lifetimerubyist wrote: post #18

When stuff was getting too complicated, I looked for ways to make things simpler. Developers have spent decades trying to figure out ways to make things simpler, less code the better, only to throw it all out the window because chatbot go brrrrrr.

please, developers are making terrible slop way before AI, look at the javascript infested frameworks in use on the web. they make NO sense. they are not making things simpler

Re: Web development is fun again

#90

Post by lifetimerubyist »

kome wrote: post #88
lifetimerubyist wrote: post #18

When stuff was getting too complicated, I looked for ways to make things simpler. Developers have spent decades trying to figure out ways to make things simpler, less code the better, only to throw it all out the window because chatbot go brrrrrr.

please, developers are making terrible slop way before AI, look at the javascript infested frameworks in use on the web. they make NO sense. they are not making things simpler

And now you can generate javascript infested slop frameworks for $5 per million tokens. Such an improvement.

And it's so easy to just ask Claude to make one for you, why even bother standardizing anything when you can just use bespoke slop for anything anymore.

Libraries and frameworks? Not needed. Just shove everything into CC/Codex and let it figure it out.

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