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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

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121–130 of 658 posts

Re: Web development is fun again

#121

Post by dharmatech »

elliotbnvl wrote: post #40
timenotwasted wrote: post #13

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.

Yes! I feel like so many people really fail to appreciate this side of things. Heck, Suno has gotten me to the point where I play so much more piano (the recording -> polished track loop is very rewarding) that not only did I publish an album to Spotify in my favorite genre, of music that I’m really happy with, I’ve also started to produce some polished acoustic recordings with NO AI involvement. That’s just because…

What should we search for to hear your album?

Re: Web development is fun again

#122

Post by dolebirchwood »

llmslave2 wrote: post #117

> Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive Developers notoriously overestimate the productivity gains of AI, especially because it's akin to gambling every time you make a prompt, hoping for the AI's output to work. I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive.

I accept there are productivity gains, but it's hard to take "10x" seriously. It's such a tired trope. Is no one humble enough to be a meager 2.5x engineer?

Re: Web development is fun again

#123

Post by wackget »

> 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.

You only have those things if you choose to use them.

I've been building websites for 25 years. I use the same core technologies today that I did when I started. Sure, I make use of modern improvements to the languages themselves, but I have never permanently adopted any of the "hot new trends" and feel I am better - or at least saner - for it.

No, your marketing or e-commerce website almost certainly doesn't need a JS bundling toolchain. It almost certainly doesn't need a CSS preprocessor or even a CSS boilerplate/framework. It almost certainly doesn't need an enterprise-class PHP framework; or a dependency manager; or a CI/CD pipeline.

Re: Web development is fun again

#124

Post by llmslave2 »

stavros wrote: post #120
llmslave2 wrote: post #117

> Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive Developers notoriously overestimate the productivity gains of AI, especially because it's akin to gambling every time you make a prompt, hoping for the AI's output to work. I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive.

Just as a personal data point, are you a developer? Do you use AI?

Yes and yes.

Re: Web development is fun again

#125

Post by lmorchard »

ori_b wrote: post #113
lmorchard wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just obtuse. Some folks have fun building their own pizza oven, curing & slicing their own meat, and mixing their own dough. Some folks like to buy mostly pre-made stuff and just play with a few special ingredients. Some folks want to make 5 different pizzas with different flavors. Some folks just order a pizza. Some folks walk out of their house and start hiking. Some folks drive somewhere and then start wal…

It's interesting that nobody has actually answered what part of the process they enjoy.

It's different for everyone, so no one answer would likely satisfy you

Re: Web development is fun again

#126

Post by llmslave2 »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #122
llmslave2 wrote: post #117

> Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive Developers notoriously overestimate the productivity gains of AI, especially because it's akin to gambling every time you make a prompt, hoping for the AI's output to work. I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive.

I accept there are productivity gains, but it's hard to take "10x" seriously. It's such a tired trope. Is no one humble enough to be a meager 2.5x engineer?

Even 2.5x is absurd. If they said 1.5x I might believe them.

Re: Web development is fun again

#127

Post by ifh-hn »

wackget wrote: post #123

> 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. You only have those things if you choose to use them. I've been building websites for 25 years. I use the same core technologies today that I did when I started. Sure, I make us…

What are you using? If you don't mind me asking.

Re: Web development is fun again

#128

Post by dangoodmanUT »

More related to the title, i've found the same.

I was always an aggressive pixel-pusher, so web dev took me AGES.

But with shadcn + llms I'm flying through stuff, no lie, 5-20x faster than I was before.

And i dont hate it anymore

Re: Web development is fun again

#129

Post by Bombthecat »

lifetimerubyist wrote: post #90
kome wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, so what? That's what I basically do, i need a little framework with this and that and API, 15 minutes later I get exactly what I need and want. Not more, not less.as long as it's not Auth, crypto or something like that, I don't see an issue.

Re: Web development is fun again

#130

Post by agumonkey »

101008 wrote: post #108
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…

I was very anti AI (mainly because I am scared that I'll take my job). I did a side project that would have took me weeks in just two days. I deployed it. It's there, waiting for customers now. I felt in love with the process to be honest. I complained my wife yesterday: "my only problem now is that I don't have enough time and money to pay all the servers", because it opened to me the opportunities to develop and de…

Aren't you afraid it's gonna be a race to the bottom ? the software industry is now whoever pays gemini to deploy something prompted in a few days. Everybody can, so the market will be inundated by a lot of people, and usually this makes for a bad market (a few shiny one gets 90% of the share while the rest fight for breadcrumbs)

I'm personally more afraid that stupid sales oriented will take my job instead of losing it to solid teams of dedicated expert that invested a lot of skills in making something on their own. it seems like value inversion

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