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The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

nolanlawson.com

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Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#241

Post by jplusequalt »

chpatrick wrote: post #85
jplusequalt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Typing the code was never the interesting part. But solving hard problems and developing systems intuition was. If you're trying to tell me that people working on code bases predominantly written by AI are still solving hard problems themselves, or understand the systems the AI is building, I think they're lying to themselves.

I work on a codebase with a lot of math and I've both learned and implemented a bunch of things that were beyond my level before I could iterate on it with AI. Same for binary reverse engineering. On the other fixing tedious bugs by hand and typing the code in is not something I miss at all.

>beyond my level before I could iterate on it with AI

So you agree that you're dependent on an LLM to do your work?

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#242

Post by archagon »

pocksuppet wrote: post #143
toyg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken with the true arrogance of someone who has no idea about the real world of finance. When your software has to produce legal documents, satisfy auditors, and certify a bunch of things to shareholders and governments, I'm sorry but your $200 vibecoded hack is not going to cut it. You will have to get it certified, to get it audited, to get it secured according to this and that legislation, to prove where it gets…

Ha! you think anyone cares about regulatory compliance? no, they only need the appearance of regulatory compliance

Everyone has a plan until they get sued into oblivion.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#243

Post by ivandenysov »

zhivota wrote: post #226

These articles make me wonder, are we driving ourselves into a local maximum of progress? If people move to React because agents know React, will the next better framework ever get traction? Extrapolate this thought to more than just front end dev, especially because we'll have fewer actual practitioners to invent the next framework. Maybe the agents will do it for us I guess?

The big bet is that the LLMs will get good enough to invent new frameworks or even branches of math. I hope it pans out. Otherwise we will get stuck in a local maximum for a while.

On the positive side We won’t get the cars, but our horses will be damn fast ;)

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#244

Post by mpweiher »

I think people overestimate the effect of representation of specific programming languages or frameworks.

I had Codex or Claude create simple web apps for me in Objective-Smalltalk. And it did a good job.

I am pretty sure that Objective-Smalltalk web apps are so underrepresented in the training set as to be almost or even actually nonexistent.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#245

Post by rpdillon »

sureglymop wrote: post #215
jojobas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creativity and originality? Like when you try to scroll a page and it rotates an image gallery instead?

Not sure if sarcastic but no. Check out for example this website: https://www.geofungames.com/ The functionality more or less works and the website is usable, but the design follows that "AI style". I'm not sure how else to describe it.

I think it's just the modern version of the default MySpace or Facebook page. People primarily need the functionality and they reach for the tool that gives them that functionality even if it feels fairly cookie cutter.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#246

Post by tayo42 »

archagon wrote: post #234
larodi wrote: post #188

We gave a university class called "Advanced JS" and it was going for more than 13 years. Some years we had 30, others 50, recently more like 18 students. In 2026 though, I see very little reason to continue to do so. What am I going to teach them? How to run Codex or CC? Who in his right mind would like to dive in super complex browser internals? We have always considered ourselves forward-thinking with live coding,…

Unless this is the endpoint of software engineering (React for the next thousand years?) someone’s gonna have to do the work of understanding and pushing things forward. It won’t be an agent.

Have there's been interesting developments since ai coding got popular?

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#247

Post by FoundTheRetard »

embedding-shape wrote: post #196
sureglymop wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me is that I notice it everywhere. Not only does AI have a distinct writing style, it has a distinct style of frontend UI/UX design. I notice it on more and more websites and it bores me. I want creativity and originality. I haven't really seen AI exhibit that at all. It can maybe be driven there through persistent human input but then I think it's still the human being original/creative.

You'll get used to everything looking the same, this always goes in cycles and we're bound for it correcting itself shortly. In the past, we had this for web 2.0, Bootstrap, Tailwind (right before LLMs) and now LLMs, it all starts to look the same, then people get tired of it and everything looks unique and novel, until people get bored of that and a new unified design language starts to spread again, leading everyth…

[dead]

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#248

Post by oefrha »

nozzlegear wrote: post #235
oefrha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that my nontechnical coworker has shared quite a few of these TikToks/Google Shorts with me, yes tons of people are making them. I don’t know what kind of alternative reality you live in, you can just go to any social media site and search for “create website with ChatGPT” etc. and check the view counts. Plus the context here isn’t any random person, but people who intend to pay for website development for thei…

Given that my normie wife, normie family and normie coworkers haven't shared any such videos with me, my own anecdata seems to cancel yours out and now we're at an impasse. Perhaps you're living in an alternative reality where your nontechnical coworkers get recommended weird AI videos because of where they work and who they associate with?

Sure, because people you know haven’t shared with you, no one would “be making those TikTok videos in the first place”. Can’t argue with logic.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#249

Post by matroxmemories »

larodi wrote: post #223
embedding-shape wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then one day came this bloke who was holding chatgee in his hand and asking me questions right off it, as if testing me. I went berserk, and this was the moment I decided Was that the first/only moment you had a draining/bad student? Seems quick to give up because of one bad experience, maybe this was repeating? Personally, I felt similarly once the people I'm mentoring started using CC and Codex and similar st…

> Was that the first/only moment you had a draining/bad student? Seems quick to give up because of one bad experience, maybe this was repeating? well, in 2025, not sure if related to agentic dev, but very likely, there is a very well felt drop in attention. also we figured there is a massive misproportion between people who have already used GPTs alongside classic dev, and those who have adopted or been exposed to ag…

If you were just teaching technical trivia, I would have considered that teacher a bad teacher even in the 90s.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#250

Post by latchkey »

archagon wrote: post #239
latchkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing you haven't come to terms with is that it is more important to ship than it is to worry about the issues in the future. i thought RoR taught everyone that. the beauty of what's happening today is that AI might produce slop on the first try, but you can also refactor just as easily too. "clean up all !important and optimize the code for speed", is just as easy of a prompt and it'll go off and do a fantastic…

“the thing you haven't come to terms with…” Why the fuck do so many people write like this nowadays? Quit acting like you have access to some sort of universal knowledge or unique insight into other people’s state of mind; it’s extremely obnoxious. You’re presumably trying to communicate with adult professionals, not children.

If you're "reluctantly using" HN, maybe you should stop because it doesn't seem healthy for you.

Yes, I do have some unique insights based on decades of experience building products and businesses. People who think that AI is going to produce shit vibe code forever, deserve the decency to be warned about what is coming.

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