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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

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Re: Web development is fun again

#141

Post by solumunus »

agumonkey wrote: post #130
101008 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anything that can be done in 2 days now with an LLM was low hanging fruit to begin with.

Re: Web development is fun again

#143

Post by sublinear »

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…

It's so weird to see this take repeated over and over. I have to assume you have never written a large scale project for the web? The only part where I agree is that you don't need PHP or server-side rendering in general.

Re: Web development is fun again

#144

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

llmslave2 wrote: post #126
dolebirchwood wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm building an AI agent for Godot, and in paid user testing we found the median speed up time to complete a variety of tasks[0] was 2x. This number was closer to 10x for less experienced engineers

[0] tasks included making games from scratch and resolving bugs we put into template projects. There's no perfect tasks to test on, but this seemed sufficient

Re: Web development is fun again

#145

Post by turtlebits »

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.

Numbers don't matter if it makes you "feel" more productive.

I've started and finished way more small projects i was too lazy to start without AI. So infinitely more productive?

Though I've definitely wasted some time not liking what AI generated and started a new chat.

Re: Web development is fun again

#146

Post by Jaygles »

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…

Those technologies don't just solve tech issues, they solve organizational issues. If one or two people manage a website, going without fancy tooling is completely fine. When 1000 people are managing a product with complex business logic across multiple platforms, you need fancy tooling to ensure everyone can work at a reasonable level of productivity.

Re: Web development is fun again

#147

Post by duggan »

llmslave2 wrote: post #118
yomismoaqui wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely searching "centre a div" takes less time than prompting and waiting for a response...

Search “centre a div” in Google

Wade through ads

Skim a treatise on the history of centering content

Skim over the “this question is off topic / duplicate” noise if Stack Overflow

Find some code on the page

Try to map how that code will work in the context of your other layout

Realize it’s plain CSS and you’re looking for Tailwind

Keep searching

Try some stuff until it works

Or…

Ask LLM. Wait 20-30 seconds. Move on to the next thing.

Re: Web development is fun again

#148

Post by agumonkey »

solumunus wrote: post #141
agumonkey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anything that can be done in 2 days now with an LLM was low hanging fruit to begin with.

I really wonder what long term software engineering projects will become.

Re: Web development is fun again

#149

Post by bgwalter »

dang wrote: post #138
bgwalter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting cynical and/or curmudgeonly comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, and it destroys the intended spirit of this site. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

How can I express in a non cynical way that I think LLMs are theft? Even if courts decide in the future that they think it is not, it is still a protected opinion in the same manner that some people do not recognize the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Re: Web development is fun again

#150

Post by kmoser »

llmslave2 wrote: post #126
dolebirchwood wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recently used AI to help build the majority of a small project (database-driven website with search and admin capabilities) and I'd confidently say I was able to build it 3 to 5 times faster with AI. For context, I'm an experienced developer and know how to tweak the AI code when it's wonky and the AI can't be coerced into fixing its mistakes.
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