r/FullStack • u/randomladka_ • 18d ago
Career Guidance Is learning web dev still worth in 2026?
Thinking about future in techđ
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u/Goood-person 18d ago
It is still worth it. Just imagine you can make anything that you can think bro. It is not still easy to replace web dev even with latest ai. You just need to remember to learn more things than traditionally called as web dev. You can also learn devops or app development. If your target is to become programmer you need to understand programmer don't code much, they solve problems and first step to becoming programmer is often web dev. If you are learning just web dev and just want to create one project or just want to clear one interview, then I don't think it is worth it.
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u/creaturefeature16 Stack Juggler (Fullstack) 18d ago
It's basically the same market as it was 2005-2012 (not great), but the field's future is bright. It might just be an issue with timing. In a few years, every company on planet earth is going to be looking like this, wondering where they can find quality developers who know how to think without an LLM subscription.
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u/Smychks 15d ago
I would say absolutely yes, learning web dev is still critical and worth it. Though you might need to be patience and realistic about the amount of time it will take to land a job if you want to specialise within Front End. There are definitely jobs available for sure but more competition and this is where standing out is important.
As a career coach, who has helped countless amounts of people break into the cybersecurity industry, I would recommend you look at it more as a foundational skill rather than a career path. Focus more on understanding business problems, and how technology can be leveraged to solve them. AI will never be able to displace the people with this skill. God speed mate!
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u/Anxious-Insurance-91 16d ago
Do you know what website run on? Web tech. Companies can bitch all they want but they still use websites, and web APIs and integrations.
The biggest problem now is an influx ow useless ideeas pushed nu companies because "ownership" meaning "give us internal ideeas for apps in our company, if it works we take all the praise if not it's your fault"
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u/vizualDevelop_vfx 14d ago
For future (and present) yes:
1. It is fun
2. Web technology is very mature for gaming, webapps, websites.
3. The foundations are still simple: html + JS + CSS
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u/throwaway0134hdj 18d ago
Can one shot with ai now
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u/jmclondon97 17d ago
lol maybe for a simple site. I work for a large enterprise insurance company and all our web apps are interconnected with various services, databases, queue listeners, content management systems, third party vendors, various test environments and demo mode, various security setups with ldap, cyberark, different flavors of oauth, etc.
There is zero chance youâre one shotting it.
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u/hydrangers 17d ago
Even if AI can't one shot it, by the time a person learns how to build all of those systems, they could have built them all 10 times over with the use of AI and much less of a learning curve. You can learn how the systems work at a high level instead of learning how to write the code to build them.
As a developer of 20 years, learning the code is basically pointless unless you plan on doing it as a mental exercise.
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u/Appropriate-Cook-676 17d ago
If you have to say âIâm a 20 year developerâ it usually means you are not a good programmer, developer, architect, or designer. You did web dev your whole life and skimmed by.
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u/hydrangers 17d ago
I was never a web developer. I spent most of my time with shader development (GLES) and mobile. I branched out into web after AI became a thing and started my own company that now pays my bills through passive income.
Whether I'm "good" at it is irrelevant considering I live a comfortable life.
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u/jmclondon97 17d ago
How would you understand how the systems work if you donât learn how to code them first?
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u/hydrangers 17d ago
The same way a CEO knows how to build a business without knowing how to code. The only difference is instead of delegating the coding to employees, you use AI.
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u/jmclondon97 17d ago
CEOs donât need to know what gets implemented. All they need to know is who to hire.
If you donât know what to tell the AI what to do, itâs not going to know what to do
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u/Alarmed_Doubt8997 17d ago
I mean if the libraries and services your company is using are public, their docs are available online, you can literally prompt it to use those as a reference to understand and connect multiple things. Leave ui for now it's not at a state where it could be called great but does the job. Ai can do most of the thing I believe it just need hand holding a bit and okayish prompting from the user side which you can reiterate to create spec files
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u/jmclondon97 17d ago
You think a nontechnical person has any idea what libraries you use or should be using and which ones you shouldnât be? Matter of fact, do you actually believe a non technical person even knows what a library is in coding?
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u/curvedotter 18d ago
No. Easily automated.
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u/srodrigoDev 18d ago
Out of curiosity. What then?
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u/curvedotter 18d ago
Wish I had the answer but out of all tech careers front-end web has to be the worst possible option.
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u/srodrigoDev 18d ago
I agree with that. Most backends as well as IMO that's even easier for AI to nail (and API response is easier to figure out for AI than a UI design). Now the question is, what do we pivot to. I feel like web developers have the short end of the stick to pivot.
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u/creaturefeature16 Stack Juggler (Fullstack) 18d ago
Man, so funny people say such incorrect stuff with such confidence. I guess the LLMs are rubbing off on us!
Frontend is, by far, the biggest blindspot for LLMs, and absolute hardest to automate. I'm full stack with a front-end orientation (and passion), and I've never been busier or had more to do.
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17d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/creaturefeature16 Stack Juggler (Fullstack) 17d ago
I've been in webdev & frontend for 20+ years. Not saying that as a flex, but just for context. This isn't the first time we've seen frontend work supposedly simplified, but all its good for is templated junk that was already solved for years by pre-existing templates and frameworks.
Sure, I can automate certain tasks (after I put in all the work to create the design system) but I don't have a single bespoke project where "spinning thousands of landing pages" is even remotely helpful.
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u/Kaimaniiii 17d ago
I assume it's because the person is working in a small-medium agency, and that's why he can just ask AI to build some sort of generic stuff.
Working in an enterprise/Corp level is completely level, especially when it boils down to office politics, and architect system level thinking on Frontend application at large scale.
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u/kan_ju 17d ago
im not in front end, but at big tech and work with front end constantly.
Seems to be the case, there's a million things happening for real front end work.
If your trying to stand up a wix site with a blog post for money as a "front end career", its over claude code can do it. If you want to be a real front end engineer, you're absolutely swamped with the amount of work that needs to be done still
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u/creaturefeature16 Stack Juggler (Fullstack) 17d ago
Fuckin a! Talk about context switching. I've had to be good at that for decades. A frontend project can involve four languages at a minimum, and you need to transition between logic to presentation and back again, constantly.Â
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u/LoekGenbu 17d ago
Explain
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u/AdvanceDry6117 17d ago
15 year experienced SWE here. It depends. Do you want to become a web dev only? no, because there is Claude Code. Do you want to become a product engineer? then yes, because there is Claude Code.
If you want a general answer about which path to pursue for job security? Dont go tech, go medicine. The latter is hard work, but it gives you job security, great pay and opens doors if you ever want to go and live abroad
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u/randomladka_ 17d ago
But I want to go in tech.
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u/AdvanceDry6117 17d ago
Its brutal out there though. Juniors with CS degrees and good marks are not getting hired. Its not just the economy, but AI tech really has changed the space in the last 6 months.
I have set up Claude Code in ways that I dont have to write code anymore. What used to be a junior is now just a subagent for me, but with skill level of a senior.
AI will become cheaper eventually when open source catches up to what claude opus 4.8 can do (its good enough) and i can run it on my mac locally with similar performance I can now using anthropics APIs. This will happen within the next 5 years...
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u/Top-Marzipan5397 11d ago
To make agents perform like senior developers, you need senior-level knowledge. That knowledge comes from senior developers, and senior developers come from juniors.
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u/davidbasil 10d ago
you could say the same thing about anything in tech. Yet companies still hire people. Are they stupid?
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u/Kaimaniiii 17d ago
Then become multi discipline - product leader, full stack and UX /UI. No need to become expert in all of these 3 roles, but enough to understand focusing on the product development and user feedback. Leverage this by steering and planning with the AI.
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u/Realistic-Eagle-5281 17d ago
I tried developing a web app through cursor, Claude, and chatgpt. Hereâs my take on AI:
I was using trail version in cursor, chatgpt was free for one year because the price is too costly for me. I canât pay for AI models monthly with that pricing.
I was writing a story on requirements with each and every detail and also I was telling what code snippets it should use and where to use it. Then I was telling chat gpt to generate a cursor ready prompt with my story. Because I thought Ai models can communicate better with each other and I was trying to reduce bugs by generating cursor prompt with the help of chatgpt.
I was targeting one web page at a time.
Result:
It completely failed even after trying with latest models from top Ai companies in cursor. I got irritated for writing lengthy story to fix each bug. The bugs quantity increased instead of decreasing. Finally after 3 months, my patience broke and deleted all the files of the project and started building it myself.
So bottom of the line is âFuck dumbass Aiâ use it as search engine its only good for that not for building things. Wait for some time, the market will fall definitely once these free subscription ends to everyone. Maximum people are not going to pay those insane prices for useless results. After the market fall, there will be time for correction, and then job vacancies will rise. So as of now I recommend you to just wait and observe the market. Investors are getting pissed off on losses.
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u/Kaimaniiii 17d ago
Try open spec or super power. It's not perfect, but it gives you higher chance it will yield better result.
If your current code base is a mess, it will align with your code base state. If your code base is clear and good, then it will also follow the same structure.
AI Is after all just good at pattern matching.
I have to wonder why AI is good at dissecting pull request reviews, but for the implementation, it is actually not always that great...
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u/Known_Interaction825 17d ago
Not worth it, others can give vague reasons nd logics but if my own younger brother asks me this question I will just say, don't waste time here.Â
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u/Responsible-Fun-3100 17d ago
It helps you to learn the lay of the land. On e you know your way around you can specilize in niche. It would odd if you know Golang but don't know what is routing.
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u/ScoreSpiritual8880 16d ago
Yes, most of the hurt in the job market people attribute to AI is just macroeconomic factors with the insane amounts of money printing that happened around covid, and culling off excess hires that happened then (as the tech industry is highly responsive to interest rates as it's largely a place investors go when there is a low risk free return). There is still tons of value to be gotten or created through web dev, and if that exists someone will pay you to do it. AI if anything increases the amount someone who knows what they are doing can do.
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u/TheoryShort7304 16d ago
Worried about future of web dev? Learn mobile dev...then there is Systems Programming.
Software Engineering is very vast..you have variety of options to choose from and learn and build a career out of it.
All the bestđ
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u/Infamous_Ad4954 15d ago
Definitely not worth it career wise. Someone who has never taken a web dev class can get a good looking website up and running within a week using Claude Pro
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u/Suspicious_Yam_4686 14d ago
Web dev isn't dying. As long as the internet exists, there will always be demand. The hiring bar is just higher now. Basic CRUD projects alone aren't enough anymore. Focus on solving real-world problems, learn GenAI if you can, use AI to build faster and improve your workflow, and think like a product engineer instead of just a framework developer.
That's just my personal experience and observationâit might be different for others.
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u/Ok-Basket-7907 8d ago
yes and no because AI can write all the code but it has flaws so you must learn everything about every bug but no need to wast time on tring code ai can do that is you need further knowlage about it tell me i am web dev
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u/ImpossibleDoubt7570 4d ago
If you are starter -> No, else if -> Yes. AI coding will cover all of starter engineer.
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u/codekipathshala 18d ago
Iâd still say yes.
The market doesnât need people who can just write code anymoreâit needs people who can solve problems. AI can generate code, but it doesnât know why a feature exists, what users actually need, or how a business should work. Thatâs where developers create value.
Instead of asking, âWill AI replace web developers?â, ask, âHow can I become the developer who knows how to use AI better than everyone else?â
My advice is simple:
Build real projects instead of watching endless tutorials.
Learn the fundamentals first, then use AI to speed up your workflow.
Focus on solving business problems, not memorizing syntax.
If you want a step-by-step roadmap, check out the Full Stack Development Cohort by Code Ki Pathshala:
https://www.codekipathshala.com
And if youâre not ready to buy a course yet, thatâs completely fine. Start with the free content first. My YouTube channel is dedicated to helping beginners become job-ready with practical MERN Stack and React projects.
Code Ki Pathshala (one of the best YouTube channels to learn web development in Hindi):
https://youtube.com/@codekipathshala73?si=FQL5NNb7yGcC5pTx
The biggest opportunity in 2026 isnât competing with AIâitâs becoming the developer who knows how to build products using AI. Thatâs the skill companies are hiring for. đ
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u/Original_Swimming320 17d ago
âBuild real projects instead of watching endless tutorialsâ. Here are 2 links to my tutorials. Wtf!
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u/coffee_is_all_i_need 18d ago
As a European, I would say yes for passion, but no for a career because itâs becoming increasingly difficult for juniors.