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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

91–100 of 658 posts

Re: Web development is fun again

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Re: Web development is fun again

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I’ve seen this myself, folks moving back into development after years or decades.

Only it’s a bit like me getting back into cooking because I described the dish I want to a trainee cook.

This approach seems to have worked out for both Warhol and Chihuly.

Re: Web development is fun again

#93
It's amazing to be able to try a bunch of ideas with very minimal cost. That being said, AI code assistants don't have eyeballs and they often make things that don't look very good. Craft, polish and judgement still matter.

Re: Web development is fun again

#94
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.

No shame in that. I keep struggling to figure out the point of view of the CSS designers.

They don't think like graphic designers, or like programmers. It's not easy for beginners. It's not aimed at ease of implementation. It's not amenable to automated validation. It's not meant to be generated.

If there is some person for whom CSS layout comes naturally, I have not met them. As far as I can tell their design goal was to confuse everyone, at which they succeeded magnificently.

Re: Web development is fun again

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you get the dish you want when before you couldn’t have it — who cares?

Sure, as long as you don’t expect me to digest it, live with it, and crap it out for you, I see no problem with it.

So you're saying that if you go to any famous restaurant and the famous face of the restaurant isn't personally preparing your dinner with their hands and singular attention, you are disappointed.

Got it.

Re: Web development is fun again

#96
post #84
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it hiking if I bought my boots on amazon?

Re: Web development is fun again

#97
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…

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Re: Web development is fun again

#98
>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... I remember when the biggest challenge was IE6 compatibility.

It is not necessary to do this. Server-side rendering is still a thing.

I still do a lot of my side projects in ruby on rails, which is maybe not fashionable these days but:

- no heavy js means speedy first paint

- I just use normal minified css, no sass or other junk

- partials means navigation is snappy

Plus it containerizes nicely.

Re: Web development is fun again

#99
post #96
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it hiking if I bought my boots on amazon?

Not if you sit at home wearing boots and looking at photos of mountains.

If you want to have boots, that's cool. But is replacing walking with ordering boots and photos making hiking fun again? Or were you only interested in the photos anyway?

What part of the process of hiking do you enjoy? And why is it so hard to hear what part of the process of programming people enjoy?

Re: Web development is fun again

#100

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.

In a very real sense, developers efforts to make web development simpler have clearly failed. This is true regardless of the existence of LLMs and/or your opinion of their utility.
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