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Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

mastrojs.github.io

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Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#181

Post by BizarroLand »

bakugo wrote: post #28
Filligree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue back that LLMs likely have a better understanding of a11y conventions than I do as well. To make the obvious counterargument, “then you shouldn’t be creating websites at all”. I don’t actually believe this, but I know people who do. Some would add “shouldn’t be allowed to”.

I wonder what went so wrong that "if you don't understand [thing] you shouldn't be building [thing]" is now considered a controversial statement.

It has always been a controversial statement.

How are you supposed to learn without doing? Who sets the bar for when you have achieved understanding?

And finally, in specific instances of creating front ends that are inclusive for users, I would argue that being willing to receive feedback and improve is vastly more important than getting it right on the first try.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#182

Post by coffeefirst »

ai_slop_hater wrote: post #144

> Just like AI is deskilling programming now, 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. What does he mean by this? What skills were lost? Writing HTML templates?

Understanding the DOM. Understanding performance. Understanding closures. Knowing how an event bubbles. Understanding CSS… at all.

The effect of this is that people who never learned those things are working with a limited toolkit both in solving problems and debugging. And every so often I get to blow someone’s mind with an old trick :)

It’s not all bad though! I’m happy to never build a layout with floats again.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#183

Post by bayarearefugee »

kristianc wrote: post #77
oblio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can read the code? Historical discussions around it? Commit histories? And if everyone bunkers up and all that open content dries up starting in 2026, let's say, what happens?

It won't happen, for two reasons. One is that great deal of open-source software and hobbyist knowledge sharing has never been driven by financial reward anyway and people will continue to do it anyway. Finer grained controls over opt-outs would be great (the equivalent of a search engine 'nofollow' would be great and will hopefully come with time). Many kinds of technology faced this kind of tragedy of the commons a…

> great deal of open-source software and hobbyist knowledge sharing has never been driven by financial reward anyway and people will continue to do it anyway.

A lot of open-source software was supported by developers having stable well-paying jobs that didn't burn them out and afforded them enough free time to work on passion projects on the side, so that even if their company wasn't directly supporting their OSS development, there was still an indirect link.

Not only is this likely to increasingly change in the future as people need to spend more time navigating the disruption AI will have on labor, it already visibly has been changing over the past year.

One of the top posts on HN today is someone leaving open source and tech completely to work at Home Depot -- while this is an extreme case it isn't wholly unique to what I'm seeing in many places since 2025.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#184

Post by emodendroket »

PaulHoule wrote: post #130
emodendroket wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that most users do not notice or care about this at all so it's a completely reasonable sacrifice to make to have rich applications.

The bit that goes unsaid about Electron is... why? If the goal is a legitimate app that has the lifecycle of an app that you start up and then shut down today the answer is "just write a web application" and then it "just works" on Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Meta Quest, etc. Mostly people get pissed about Electron because they have 15 Electron apps running in the tray burning up resources all the time and p…

Well, wanting to interact with the tray, plus access to native resources your browser can't access, I'd imagine.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#185

Post by emodendroket »

mcmcmc wrote: post #136
emodendroket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose the choice is between software that does what you want, but isn't very optimized, and the software not existing at all, rather than between shoddy and beautiful software that both do what you want, and maybe it will make more sense to you.

So apply a false dichotomy and it will all make sense? Still not buying it. Not everything needs to be solved with software, and brushing off negative externalities as “not very optimized” is irresponsible

It's not a false dichotomy at all. There wasn't a lot of junk clothing in the ancient world -- everything was made to last. The downside was it was very expensive and most people didn't have much. The episode with the guards casting lots to see who can have Jesus's robes in the gospels is rather difficult to understand for a modern audience.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#186

Post by emodendroket »

wiseowise wrote: post #159
emodendroket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose the choice is between software that does what you want, but isn't very optimized, and the software not existing at all, rather than between shoddy and beautiful software that both do what you want, and maybe it will make more sense to you.

> and maybe it will make more sense to you Still doesn't.

Well, I can lead a horse to water but not make it drink.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#187

Post by emodendroket »

acedTrex wrote: post #139
emodendroket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose the choice is between software that does what you want, but isn't very optimized, and the software not existing at all, rather than between shoddy and beautiful software that both do what you want, and maybe it will make more sense to you.

I will pick the software not existing at all every time. Easily without a thought.

I think that's an absurd thing to believe, but if we've moved beyond "I don't understand" to "I don't agree" then my post served its purpose.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#188

Post by wiseowise »

emodendroket wrote: post #186
wiseowise wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and maybe it will make more sense to you Still doesn't.

Well, I can lead a horse to water but not make it drink.

Give it an LLM, maybe it can write a half-assed app that can help it drink.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#189

Post by ericmcer »

I don't agree that running a frontend application with NextJS SSR, lazy loading, etc. is "easy" compared to the days where you just wrote HTML, JS and CSS. The level of complexity and the expectations of users are in totally different places.

Not to mention there are 1000X as many skilled engineers and you are competing with a global market. In the early 2000s there was very little competition. The skills of workers are loosely going to correlate with the demands the market puts on them, and it is extremely competitive now.

Re: Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

#190

Post by HDThoreaun »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #166
trjordan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Every "we're losing our craft" article has the same gloomy shape. That's enough of a bummer, but they also argue against themselves halfway through. This one, for instance: > But exactly which details are deemed “unimportant” is a very consequential and sometimes subjective decision. And eventually, the details always leak through. Right, so you're saying this new technology will still reward deep technical…

It's just not what I wanted. I got into software because I liked coding, deep technical understanding only excited me because it would help me code better. I don't want to get too "woe is me", there are far worse things in the world than having a vaguely unsatisfying job, but there are life choices I would have made differently had I known coding would be automated in 2026.

You can still code all you like, youre just not going to get paid for it.
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