Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
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Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
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Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#2> JavaScript frameworks have deskilled frontend development in the last decade. As someone who started with HTML/CSS and a bit of PHP, later did Ruby on Rails, and then was frontend team lead of a major Swiss newspaper (Next.js at the time), I’ve seen the transformation first-hand
I'm sorry but that simply does not make any sense. How is increasing the breadth of your skills leading to a deskilling?
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#3> frontend used to be a highly specialized skill, requiring knowledge of semantic HTML, CSS, the differences of various browsers, accessibility, progressive enhancement, network performance, interface design and user testing
I remember this period differently. The frontend work was mostly, sometimes solely, all about turning whatever monstrous PSD came from the designer’s sick mind into HTML, and getting shafted if the result was not pixel-for-pixel identical. When project leads heard the word “semantic”, they had to reach for the dictionary. Upon hearing the word “accessibility”, they would set the dictionary on fire.
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#4> JavaScript frameworks have deskilled frontend development in the last decade. As someone who started with HTML/CSS and a bit of PHP, later did Ruby on Rails, and then was frontend team lead of a major Swiss newspaper (Next.js at the time), I’ve seen the transformation first-hand I'm sorry but that simply does not make any sense. How is increasing the breadth of your skills leading to a deskilling?
The phenomenon of bootcamp graduates who knew React but did not know JavaScript.
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#5> JavaScript frameworks have deskilled frontend development in the last decade. As someone who started with HTML/CSS and a bit of PHP, later did Ruby on Rails, and then was frontend team lead of a major Swiss newspaper (Next.js at the time), I’ve seen the transformation first-hand I'm sorry but that simply does not make any sense. How is increasing the breadth of your skills leading to a deskilling?
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Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#6> frontend used to be a highly specialized skill, requiring knowledge of semantic HTML, CSS, the differences of various browsers, accessibility, progressive enhancement, network performance, interface design and user testing I remember this period differently. The frontend work was mostly, sometimes solely, all about turning whatever monstrous PSD came from the designer’s sick mind into HTML, and getting shafted if t…
nostalgia is one hell of a drug
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#7I think it's more likely to cause a lost Decade of people not going into CS or tech due to lack of entry-level jobs. Maybe next time there's a boom and the pendulum of the power dynamic between management and labor swings more towards the workers, tech workers will unionize or organize better. I think overall it will benefit the industry because these boom and bust cycles for employment are just not healthy.
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#8> JavaScript frameworks have deskilled frontend development in the last decade. As someone who started with HTML/CSS and a bit of PHP, later did Ruby on Rails, and then was frontend team lead of a major Swiss newspaper (Next.js at the time), I’ve seen the transformation first-hand I'm sorry but that simply does not make any sense. How is increasing the breadth of your skills leading to a deskilling?
The article explains at length what they mean by "deskilling" and it does not mean that individuals lose their skills.
The author having worked with various technologies over time is also not an example of "deskilling", it's a way of asserting that they have had time to observe the deskilling of the domain (since deskilling means a particular domain requires less specialised skills than it did before, not that the workers are losing skills) happen.
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#9> JavaScript frameworks have deskilled frontend development in the last decade. As someone who started with HTML/CSS and a bit of PHP, later did Ruby on Rails, and then was frontend team lead of a major Swiss newspaper (Next.js at the time), I’ve seen the transformation first-hand I'm sorry but that simply does not make any sense. How is increasing the breadth of your skills leading to a deskilling?
Read in context. He's referring to the evolution of skill at group level, he even puts out the definition of deskilling and mentions 'skilled labor'. He then explains how frontend used to be a 'highly specialized skill', and how modern devs use Frameworks to consider browsers almost hidden compilation targets.
Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?
#10I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling the "deep expertise" OP laments was actually deeply inconvenient to many people. I understand that there's a good living to be made from knowing browser quirks, hand-rolling accessible components, mastering CSS specificity, but this is largely accidental complexity. More people building things is straightforwardly good, and if some of those things are slower or less accessible, that's a tradeoff people are entitled to make.
You can argue that abstractions hide consequences that fall on users who didn't choose them, but I'd argue back that LLMs likely have a better understanding of a11y conventions than I do as well.