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Web development is fun again

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Re: Web development is fun again

#411

Post by pianopatrick »

bitwize wrote: post #165
imiric wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not moving back into development. They're adopting a new approach of producing software, which has nothing to do with the work that software developers do. It's likely that they "left" the field because they were more interested in other roles, which is fine. So now that we have tools that promise to offload the work a software developer does, there are more people interested in simply producing software, and…

It's called being a systems analyst or product manager. Upskill into these roles (while still accepting individual contributor pay) or get left behind.

Do you see any reason why AI and software will not soon take over system analyst or product manager roles? If we can go from natural language prompt to working code, it seems like not too big of a step to set up a system that goes straight from user feedback to code changes.

Re: Web development is fun again

#412

Post by qingcharles »

simonw wrote: post #268
exmadscientist wrote: post #267

Related question which might fit here so I'm going to try: What is the absolute cheapest way to get started on AI coding a simple website? I have a couple ideas I want to test out and get out of my head and onto the web but have resisted for years because my webdev knowledge is stuck in 2004 and I've had no desire to change that. These are not complicated things (all static, I think) but... I hate webdev. I am not re…

Google Gemini has a generous free tier. You could start by experimenting in AI Studio - https://aistudio.google.com/ - then have a go at coding agents using their Gemini CLI or Antigravity tools. For what you're describing the free tiers of the Claude and ChatGPT web apps would probably work fine too.

I think Google Antigravity works on a free account too, right?

Re: Web development is fun again

#413

Post by peteforde »

marcosdumay wrote: post #322
peteforde wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have been very successful. After we got a hit from security requirements and broke the Microsoft monopoly on browsers, web development have only got more and more potentially simple. If you or some other person don't program in the way that makes it simple, it's not our communitary problem. What matters is that the potential is there.

I think that you are confusing browser engine maturity and developer ecosystem, which means that you're having your own conversation.

Re: Web development is fun again

#414

Post by atomicnumber3 »

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 like it. It lets "management" ignore their actual jobs - the ones that are nominally so valuable that they get paid more than most engineers, remember - and instead either splash around in the kiddie pool, or go jump into the adult pool and then almost drown and need an actual engineer to bail them out. (The kiddie pool is useless side project, the adult pool is the prod codebase, and drowning is either getting lost in the weeds of "it compiles and I'm done! Now how do I merge and how do I know if I'm not going to break prod?" or just straight up causing an incident and they're apologizing profusely for ruining the oncall's evening except that both of them know they're gonna do it again in 2 weeks).

I really don't know how often I have to tell people, especially former engineers who SHOULD KNOW THIS (unless they were the kind of fail-upwards pretenders): the code is not the slow part! (Sorry, I'm not yelling at you, reader. I'm yelling at my CEO.)

Re: Web development is fun again

#415

Post by mbirth »

chung8123 wrote: post #320
lmorchard wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that after you’ve googled it for ½ hour, you’ve learned something. If you ask an LLM to do it for you, you’re none the wiser.

Re: Web development is fun again

#417

Post by hyperadvanced »

mbirth wrote: post #415
chung8123 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that after you’ve googled it for ½ hour, you’ve learned something. If you ask an LLM to do it for you, you’re none the wiser.

You can study the LLM output. In the “before times” I’d just clone a random git repo, use a template, or copy and paste stuff together to get the initial version working.

Re: Web development is fun again

#418

Post by signatoremo »

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?

10x probably means “substantial gain”. There is no universal unit of gain.

However if the difference is between doing a project vs not doing is, then the gain is much more than 10x.

Re: Web development is fun again

#419

Post by ch4s3 »

spankibalt wrote: post #406
ch4s3 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who can’t read Proust and write a compelling essay about the themes is illiterate!

One day you actually might discover there's different levels of literacy. Like there's something between 0 and 255! Here's a pointer: Not being able to read (terminus technicus: analphabet ) makes you a non-reader, just as not being able to cobble together a working proggie on your own merits makes you a non-coder. Man alive...

That’s quite literally my point.

Re: Web development is fun again

#420

Post by spankibalt »

ch4s3 wrote: post #419
spankibalt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day you actually might discover there's different levels of literacy. Like there's something between 0 and 255! Here's a pointer: Not being able to read (terminus technicus: analphabet ) makes you a non-reader, just as not being able to cobble together a working proggie on your own merits makes you a non-coder. Man alive...

That’s quite literally my point.

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