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Web development is fun again

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Re: Web development is fun again

#311

Post by alwillis »

fartfeatures wrote: post #201
yason wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but to me this all sounds like the antithesis of what makes programming fun. You don't have productivity goals for hobby coding where you'd have to make the most of your half an hour -- that sounds too much like paid work to be fun. If you have a half an hour, you tinker for a half an hour and enjoy it. Then you continue when you have another half an hour again. (Or push into night because you can't make…

You could make the same argument about the printing press. Some people like forming the letters by hand, others enjoy actually writing.

Actually, the invention of the printing press in 1450 created a similar disruption, economic panic and institutional fear similar to what we're experiencing now:

For centuries, the production of books was the exclusive domain of professional scribes and monks. To them, the printing press was an existential threat.

Job Displacement: Scribes in Paris and other major cities reportedly went on strike or petitioned for bans, fearing they would be driven into poverty.

The "Purity" Argument: Some critics argued that hand-copying was a spiritual act that instilled discipline, whereas the press was "mechanical" and "soulless."

Aesthetic Elitism: Wealthy bibliophiles initially looked down on printed books as "cheap" or "ugly" compared to hand-illuminated manuscripts. Some collectors even refused to allow printed books in their libraries to maintain their prestige.

Sound familiar?

From "How the Printing Press Reshaped Associations" -- https://smsonline.net.au/blog/how-the-printing-press-reshape... and

"How the Printing Press Changed the World" -- https://www.koolchangeprinting.com/post/how-the-printing-pre...

Re: Web development is fun again

#312

Post by SchemaLoad »

christophilus wrote: post #236

My problem is that code review has always been the least enjoyable part of the job. It’s pure drudgery, and is mentally taxing. Unless you’re vibe coding, you’re now doing a lot of code review. It’s almost all you’re doing outside of the high-level planning and guidance (which is enjoyable). I’ve settled on reviewing the security boundaries and areas that could affect data leaks / invalid access. And pretty much scan…

Agreed. I've settled on writing the code myself and having AI do the first pass review.

Re: Web development is fun again

#313

Post by vineyardmike »

apitman wrote: post #306
freedomben wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just fun in a different way now. I've long had dozens of ideas for things I wanted to build, and never enough time to really even build one of them. Over the last few months, I've been able to crank out several of these projects to satisfactory results. The code is not a beautiful work of art like I would prefer it to be, and the fun part is no longer the actual code and working in the code base like it used to…

I use LLMs for code at work, but I've been a bit hesitant to dive in for side projects because I'm worried about the cost. Is it necessary to pay $200/mo to actually ship things or will $20/mo do it? Obviously I could just try it myself and see how far I get bit I'm curious to hear from someone a bit further down the path.

The $20/mo subscription (Claude Code) that I've been using for my side projects has been more than enough for me 90% of the time. I mostly use the cheaper models lately (Haiku) and accept that it'll need a bit more intervention, but it's for personal stuff and fun so that's ok. If you use VSCode, Antigravity or another IDE that's trying to market their LLM integration, then you'll also get a tiny allowance of additional tokens through them.

I'll use it for a few hours at a time, a couple days a week, often while watching TV or whatever. I do side projects more on long rainy weekends, and maybe not even every week during the summer. I'll hit the limit if I'm stuck inside on a boring Sunday and have an idea in my head I really wanted to try out and not stop until I'm done, but usually I never hit the limit. I don't think I've hit the limit since I switched my default to Haiku FWIW.

The stat's say I've generated 182,661 output tokens in the last month (across 16 days), and total usage if via API would cost $39.67.

Re: Web development is fun again

#314

Post by duggan »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #304
duggan wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The middle step is asking an LLM how it's done and making the change yourself. You skip the web junk and learn how it's done for next time.

Yep, that’s not a bad approach, either.

I did that a lot initially, it’s really only with the advent of Claude Code integrated with VS Code that I’m learning more like I would learn from a code review.

It also depends on the project. Work code gets a lot more scrutiny than side projects, for example.

Re: Web development is fun again

#315

Post by cco »

yason wrote: post #153
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 don't know but to me this all sounds like the antithesis of what makes programming fun. You don't have productivity goals for hobby coding where you'd have to make the most of your half an hour -- that sounds too much like paid work to be fun. If you have a half an hour, you tinker for a half an hour and enjoy it. Then you continue when you have another half an hour again. (Or push into night because you can't make…

There are many people who enjoy spending an afternoon working on a classic car. There are also many people who enjoy spending an afternoon driving a classic car.

Sometimes there are people who enjoy both. Sometimes there are people that really like driving but not the tinkering and some who are the opposite.

Re: Web development is fun again

#316

Post by Marha01 »

apitman wrote: post #306
freedomben wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just fun in a different way now. I've long had dozens of ideas for things I wanted to build, and never enough time to really even build one of them. Over the last few months, I've been able to crank out several of these projects to satisfactory results. The code is not a beautiful work of art like I would prefer it to be, and the fun part is no longer the actual code and working in the code base like it used to…

I use LLMs for code at work, but I've been a bit hesitant to dive in for side projects because I'm worried about the cost. Is it necessary to pay $200/mo to actually ship things or will $20/mo do it? Obviously I could just try it myself and see how far I get bit I'm curious to hear from someone a bit further down the path.

You can use AI code editor that allows you to use your own API key, so you pay per-token, not a fixed monthly fee. For example Cline or Roo Code.

Re: Web development is fun again

#317

Post by kmoser »

anhner wrote: post #244
kmoser wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A year or so ago I was seriously thinking of making a series of videos showing how coding agents were just plain bad at producing code. This was based on my experience trying to get them to do very simple things (e.g. a five-pointed star, or text flowing around the edge of circle, in HTML/CSS). They still tend to fail at things like this, but I've come to realize that there are whole classes of adjacent problems they…

and what are those strengths, if you don't mind me asking?

  - Providing boilerplate/template code for common use cases
  - Explaining what code is doing and how it works
  - Refactoring/updating code when given specific requirements
  - Providing alternative ways of doing things that you might not have thought of yourself
YMMV; every project is different so you might not have occasion to use all of these at the same time.

Re: Web development is fun again

#318

Post by marcosdumay »

Jaygles wrote: post #146
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.

> build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images

Build pipelines are purely a technical decision. Bundlers are purely a technical decision (TBH, a non-brainer if you decide to have a build pipeline, but it's not an organizational helper). Those help one do some things, not several people to organize.

I'm still waiting for any person to claim they made CSS maintainable by adopting a framework. It's an almost purely organizational decision with no upsides at all.

PWAs are a product decision, not technical or organizational. The same applies to Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts and srcset, those are all product decisions.

You can escape the technical and organizational decisions. You can't escape the product ones.

Re: Web development is fun again

#320

Post by chung8123 »

lmorchard wrote: post #224
yason wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but to me this all sounds like the antithesis of what makes programming fun. You don't have productivity goals for hobby coding where you'd have to make the most of your half an hour -- that sounds too much like paid work to be fun. If you have a half an hour, you tinker for a half an hour and enjoy it. Then you continue when you have another half an hour again. (Or push into night because you can't make…

What you consider fun isn't universal. Some folks don't want to just tinker for half an hour, some folks enjoy getting a particular result that meets specific goals. Some folks don't find the mechanics of putting lines of code together as fun as what the code does when it runs. That might sound like paid work to you, but it can be gratifying for not-you.

For me it all the build stuff and scaffolding I have to get in place before I can even start tinkering on a project. I never formally learned all the systems and tools and AI makes all of that 10x easier. When I hit something I cannot figure out instead of googling for 1/2 hour it is 10 minutes in AI.
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