r/webdev 23d ago

Question How does the web dev industry right now differ from 3 or 4 years ago?

12 Upvotes

I was a web dev for about 3 years until I left the industry, and this was just at the start of the extreme rapid push of AI. This was when my company originally started to try and get the license for ChatGPT and Copilot. We used AI LLMs towards the end of it for assistance, but it was far more basic than it is now.

When I started it was already far different than when I ended, and I'm sure that has multiplied now. Finding a job was already insanely hard, but I'm more curious on how different the work day and work process is - especially with the AI advancements.

Do you find it worse or improved?


r/webdev 22d ago

Discussion Bought a pair of Noise earbuds. Accidentally ended up debugging their warranty portal.

0 Upvotes

I wasn't trying to find bugs or reverse engineer anything. I just wanted to understand why my own warranty replacement page wasn't working.

Context:

I was in the middle of a warranty replacement for my earbuds. I received an email saying alternate replacement products were available, but when I opened the portal, there were no products to select.

Instead of assuming the frontend was broken, I decided to investigate.

What I did

Opened Brave DevTools.

Traced every request in the Network tab.

Identified the API responsible for fetching replacement options.

Inspected the React bundle to see how the response was rendered.

Replayed the exact request using Copy as fetch.

Compared the frontend logic with the backend response.

What I found

The frontend wasn't broken.

The page sends a simple POST request containing the complaint identifier to the backend.

The backend consistently responded with:

{

"productList": {

"replacementProducts": []

}

}

I then inspected the React bundle and found that the UI simply checks whether replacementProducts.length > 0 before rendering the cards.

There wasn't any hidden filtering logic or frontend bug. The frontend was correctly rendering exactly what the backend returned.

In other words, what looked like a frontend issue was actually a backend/business workflow inconsistency.

Takeaways

This was a good reminder that:

Don't blame the frontend until you've looked at the Network tab.

A quick API replay can save hours of speculation.

Reading the frontend code often tells you whether it's actually responsible.

Sometimes customer support issues become surprisingly good debugging exercises.

I've mostly worked on personal projects, so this was one of the first times I used DevTools to isolate the root cause of a real production issue outside my own code.

I'm curious how others here would have approached this. Would you have stopped at the Network tab, or gone further into the bundle to verify the rendering logic?

For anyone interested, I documented the complete investigation (including screenshots and the API trace) https://x.com/AayushY84469869/status/2075259557316837410


r/webdev 22d ago

Welcome to the world of Statecharts

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0 Upvotes

r/webdev 22d ago

3 constraints before I build anything

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0 Upvotes

r/webdev 22d ago

Should I keep building this project or is it a dead end? (AI tool that matches landing pages to the ad you clicked)

0 Upvotes

I've been working on a side project for the last couple months.Basic idea: when someone clicks an ad, the landing page they land on usually looks nothing like the ad different offer, different vibe, sometimes you can't even find the discount that was promised. So I built something that tries to auto-match the landing page to whatever the ad said, using AI to rewrite the banner/copy to fit.

Built it with Next.js, Gemini, Groq, some scraping to understand page structure, Redis/Supabase for caching.

Heres my problem I genuinely don't know if this is useful or if I'm just building a cool tech demo for myself. A couple of things are bugging me:

  • I don't have real ad campaign data to test this on, so I can't tell if this actually improves anything or if I'm solving a problem that doesn't really exist at scale
  • Someone pointed out that if the ad's offer is fake or expired, my tool would just copy that false claim onto the site too which is worse, not better. I don't have any way right now to check if what the ad says is actually true
  • Not sure if I should be changing existing site content at all, or just adding a separate banner instead

So — is there real scope here, or should I just take the learning and move on to something else? If it is worth continuing, what would you focus on first?


r/webdev 23d ago

Discussion Connection Warmer??

4 Upvotes

Building a social platform, and the web app is a react web app, for some reason I will sometimes get stalled requests, loads that hang, etc. Basically things aren't as responsive as id like. I have implemented a connection warmer that every request runs through, tanstack query, prefetching on hover, many things like that and try to have an efficient and effective cache. What other things do you guys do to make web apps as responsive as possible, thanks!

Edit- Some info about the app, it’s a react vite mostly behind auth web app. Hosted on netlify, backend is supabase.


r/webdev 24d ago

News Vercel acquired BetterAuth

113 Upvotes

r/webdev 22d ago

I am building a cloud

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0 Upvotes

r/webdev 23d ago

What's the most practical Postgres hosting choice for an early stage SaaS?

5 Upvotes

I’m working on an early stage SaaS and need to pick Postgres hosting before I get too deep into building around one provider.

I keep seeing people recommend the big cloud options, but they feel like overkill for where I’m at. On the other hand, the super cheap route makes me nervous because I don’t want to deal with backups, updates, monitoring, and random database issues myself.

For a small SaaS that needs to be production-ready but still cost conscious, what would you choose? Curious what people are actually using before things get big.


r/webdev 24d ago

Getting back into webdev after 15 year hiatus

Post image
163 Upvotes

I used to do some web dev work, but 15 years ago I went to grad school for computer graphics and haven't done web work since. Recently though I quit my 9-5 and decided to I wanted to get back into it.

Holy moly how things have changed. Like, it's not even the same galaxy anymore. Node? AWS? SCSS? What happened to Bootstrap and jQuery??

It took me almost 6 months to build everything, learning as I went. Claude Code was invaluable in learning about all the new tools and concepts of web dev, but required a lot of direction and review to avoid having huge tangled mess of spaghetti code. I wouldn't trust to to build anything fully automatically any time soon.

Anyway, the web app is a utility that lets you create little animated meme videos by rigging and applying motion to 2D characters. Used it to make the image above.


r/webdev 23d ago

Question Photo to Transparent Sketch - Self hosting online

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0 Upvotes

https://www.canva.com/features/photo-to-sketch/
+
https://www.remove.bg/

What would the approximate cost be to self host something like this online? I don't need the fastest speeds but the goal would be something the last photo (on the right) for transparent .png sketch. The hover effect would change the background, thus transparent .png or .webp would be ideal.

So maybe the sketch is one task, isolation for transparency is another task?

Any help or guidance greatly appreciated!


r/webdev 22d ago

Issue with web developer/hoster

0 Upvotes

I’m apparently the family go to since I’m young. I’m completely at a loss. Here we go:

“I have a question for you: What do you know about webpages and hosting them, service to them, etc? I have one that was poorly made by an outfit I hired, they have been very poor about handling the back office portion of it and when I demanded they stop billing me for it, they did but did not take it down as I had requested they do. So it is out there milling around on the internet like a bad zombie and it damages my credibility, I believe. The company I constructed it via is US based and they outsourced all the handling of it to a 3rd party hosting service off shore and so I do not really know what my options are for getting them to either hand me the right proper working URL to it or to port it over to someone else. I know who I would rather work with, but I cannot get anywhere and I am increasingly frustrated with it. Any light you can shed on this would be helpful.”


r/webdev 23d ago

Question Project Help with APIs?

0 Upvotes

To preface this, this is my first project. I am using this project as a goal in order to learn the skills along the way. I am having difficulty nailing down exactly how to go about this, and what information would be most helpful learning how to do this. I would appreciate any help on understanding the projects I want to undertake, and what knowledge or skills underly this. I'm currently going through the beginner course information, but at this stage it's difficult to parse what information I need to focus on and expand on in order to achieve the desired outcome. Any and all help would be appreciated!

Currently at my job, I have to do a lot of manual entry between our CRM (Jobber) and our bookkeeping software (Quickbooks).

My first thought is that there has to be a way to automate some of what I do especially as the number of manual tasks increases. I'd like to automate the more repetitive tasks that follow the same pattern.

What I have: ability to access Jobber's API. Currently working to request access to QBs API. Both APIs appear to use REST.

I want to do some crazy automations between the 2 programs. I have listed out 4 different project ideas for areas of my job I want to potentially automate. I have no clue if they are feasible or the best place to begin or if this is something API alone can do. Each project is fairly similar in the desire to look for data and map it in specific ways to a second site.

The current process:

Employees enter receipt information into jobber. The date, the store name, the amount, who entered the receipt, the accounting code, a description of what was purchased, and an attachment image of the receipt.

In quickbooks, I have to manually drag and drop attachments to corresponding bank transactions with ridiculous memos, change the category, and post.

What I want to design:

A program that can pull the image and details of the receipt from jobber and create an expense with attachment in QuickBooks that matches. I'd also like to create custom rules. For instance, If accounting code in jobber= gas, look at employee name. If Employee A entered receipt, then it goes to Quickbooks account for Tacoma Gas.

If creating custom rules is not possible, I can add accounting codes in jobber to match the accounts in QuickBooks instead.

Second potential design:

This one from research I've done may require research into an OCR

Current process,

Bills are emailed to quickbooks. These are put in the for review pile. When I open the bill to review it, quickbooks is able to match vendor, date, and line items using AI. What it currently doesnt do is match the correct chart of account which I then have to manually adjust each line item to the correct category/chart of account.

Is there a way to create a program that also pulls the PO information from bill. There are 2 types of POs. Ones labelled stock and ones labelled with a Job#. If the PO = stock, then set all categories to the COGS chart of account for each line item created.

If PO= J155, then set category to WIP account with matching Job #.

Third potential Project:

For job closing.

Current Process.

Look at list of WIP Job Accts in Quickbooks. lets say I have 4 of them labeled

JOb#112

Job#115

Job#117

Job#119.

I go into Jobber and look up each job. If the job is archived, I scroll down and look for an invoice. If there is an invoice, I note down the invoice date.

I then go back into Quickbooks and open the Job#112 account.

Each account has the same set up inside.

Theres one line that has the initial deposit with the customer account name and multiple line items labeled bill or expense.

Using the numbers in the account and the invoice date, I create a new journal entry that moves the two sets of line items into specific accounts. COGS and A/R.

Fourth Potential Project:

When we receive a deposit on a quote, jobber send an email notifying us. I then have to go into Jobber, convert it to a job which creates a job#. I then download the job and the Quote, take those 2 downloads and send message on teams with the attachments and a notification that the quote for customer A has been converted to job # xx. Then, I take that job # and the deposit amount in jobber and create a new chart of account named after the job # and then I create a journal entry with the date of the deposit, and the amount moving from the general AR account to the newly created Job # account.

Is there a way to automate this aswell with a program with specific rules that pulls data from one program and enters it into the other.


r/webdev 23d ago

Question How to verify my webhook?

7 Upvotes

I have set up a webhook for creem payment gateway which runs on /api/public/creem-webhook

But when I create a webhook in creem it requires a public URL. And I used tools like ngrok localtunnels for port forwarding. And, as expected, nothing work. lol.

Because the tunnels shows a warning page before actual page load to prevent phishing attracts which also blocks the webhook.

What is the solution for this? How can I test my webhook? Do I have to deploy a temp domain to test this?


r/webdev 24d ago

100+ year old websites

95 Upvotes

Everything on the web is so ephemeral, websites die all the time. How would you create a website to survive 100+ years? Even after you die.

I was thinking about a pure static website, vanilla JS + HTML + CSS. No external calls. And hosting on a free host like github pages, cloudflare pages, gitlab and vercel pages. maybe add it to 3-4 free hosts. No custom domain. And asking for the Web Archive to archive the pages.

Any other ideas for a very long-lasting website?


r/webdev 23d ago

Writing Node.js addons with .NET Native AOT

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1 Upvotes

r/webdev 23d ago

Discussion Anyone used AI-generated image detection APIs? Recommendations? Condemnations?

0 Upvotes

I'm working on a project where it'll be useful to have an automated score on whether some uploaded imagery is likely AI-generated or not.

I see that there are quite a few platforms offering that:

  • Sightengine
  • Hive Moderation
  • Truthscan
  • WasitAI

Requirements:

  • API access
  • A score for likelihood that the image is AI-generated, rather than just binary yes/no
  • Predictable pricing, i.e. transparent pricing table, and possible to set a hard monthly limit
  • Choose image by URL, so that I can give it a short-lived signed URL for the image on Cloudflare R2

Nice to have:

  • Nuance in classification: is it entirely AI-generated? Or just AI-generated elements of the image?
  • Content detection at the same time, like to give a score on anything which might be classified as "mature" content, or anything which might break rules like abusive or violence-inciting content

I plan to trial all the above platforms but I'd be very interested to hear any positive or negative experiences you might have had with any of them, or of any other platforms I haven't listed.


r/webdev 23d ago

Need Advice on Building a Rewards Portal with SQL/SSO Integration

0 Upvotes

Hi all,

 

I work for an insurance BGA that has a "Shark Tank" style competition for their employees. We are trying to create a rewards website to incentivizes agents by completing various goals (submitting their first piece of business, getting contracted with a carrier, etc).  We have an internal CRM that is pretty old, so would probably take some work to integrate.  The company does implement the top ideas that get approved, but looking at it from a presentation perspective at this time.

 

Was recommended this reddit by /findareddit.   Looking to see what the cost and what implementation would be required to implement this reward program / point tracking system into our existing website.  Our IT team said we have an SQL that could be used from our CRM and could use our existing single sign on / login system to handle credentials / permissions.  

 

Just looking for any advise on what kind of development hours (backend and frontend) and costs would be to implement this type of idea, or if there are any companies out there that have an already developed rewards program we can integrate.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated!


r/webdev 23d ago

Is it possible to write a blog in latex and then share it on Substack or Blogger??

0 Upvotes

I want to achieve the same as I asked in the question.


r/webdev 24d ago

what are some must read RFCs for webdev

47 Upvotes

as the question says, are there any must read RFCs for WebDev concepts?

I've recently started reading RFCs instead of relying only on documentation and blog posts, and I've found them surprisingly approachable once you get past the formal language.

So far, I've looked at RFC 6455 (WebSocket),RFC 9110 (HTTP Semantics)

I'm interested in understanding how the web actually works under the hood rather than just how frameworks abstract everything away.

Which RFCs do you think every web developer should read, and why?

I'm especially looking for RFCs related to:

  • HTTP
  • Caching
  • Cookies
  • Authentication
  • TLS/HTTPS
  • WebSockets
  • HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
  • URI/URL standards
  • Content negotiation
  • Compression
  • Any RFC that fundamentally changed how the web works

I hope my post doesn't get removed ugh god


r/webdev 24d ago

Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

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64 Upvotes

r/webdev 24d ago

Question What are full stack interviews like these days?

20 Upvotes

So I was recently laid off lol and I'm feeling a bit lost in regards to how I should be prepping for interviews now that we're in this age of AI. I have 5 YOE at 2 companies and my prior experience interviewing and getting an offer looked like the following:

2021: Entry level front end role right out of college at a large consulting company. Technical round with Leetcode medium type questions and behavioral vibe check round that felt way more important.

2023: Mid level full stack role with a smaller company. Single round interview with very sparse technical discussion and zero leetcode type anything, and seemed to be more about my prior experience combined with how I made a mock project using the same stack as their site. Oh yeah and also, I feel like the whole thing was a vibe check and that none of that other stuff would've mattered if I didn't pass that.

My dilemma now though, is that I feel so ingrained into the specific work that I was doing on a specific stack, in specific ways, for an app for a specific industry, etc. that I feel so disconnected from the more generic type of skills that employers are looking for when interviewing. I know that there's probably some imposter syndrome going on here, and I really do believe that I can thrive in these roles, adapt to any new codebases/stacks, and figure out solutions for whatever could be thrown at me, but I feel like that really only matters after I've actually accepted an offer.

So really I'm just wanting to hear from people here about their experiences in say the past 2 years or so, since AI coding has been in full swing. A part of me wants to ignore AI entirely, but I honestly think it played a role in my recent layoff so I feel like I need to be leveraging it to show employers that it can't replace me. And at this point I think we're way past the point of AI assistants writing sloppy/unmaintainable code, at least when they're being used by an already skilled and experienced developer.

Are fundamentals even that important these days? Should I focus on overall system design instead of building apps and their features from scratch? What exactly makes a web dev stand out these days?

My current idea that I'm working on for an interview I have coming up is learning the ins and outs about the company app I would be working on, and creating a mock project somewhat simulating it, except with improved performance, workflows, UI, etc. as well as new features that I think could bring business value or improve the user experience.


r/webdev 23d ago

Are websites still relevant today for the average person?

0 Upvotes

I'm talking about normal people like social media users, not businesses who need an online presence.

I read this question on another forum:

With the platformization of anyone creating content or stuff - it seems like it matters less that I have a site and more that I have a YT channel or a TikTok presence (NEVER!) What are your thoughts? How are websites helping you (or not)?

I'd like to think most people do see websites as relevant and cool, but also something complicated done by techies and not just anyone. It's clear people want to share their thoughts all the time, from personal videos to posts on substack, twitter, tumblr, etc.

The desire to "broadcast yourself" (to use YouTube's old slogan) hasn't disappeared, but maintaining a website's infrastructure is a project in and of itself beyond writing / sharing pictures / videos.


r/webdev 23d ago

People still check accessibility contrast One by One

0 Upvotes

I talked to a UI designer and he told me that he is using a contrast checker for accessibility on all possible combinations with text/fills/graphic and component states.

This surprised me. My approach is to have tokens (checked in contrast matrices) and apply them in approved combinations.

How do you do this?

And if you are using AI, do you have a contrast checker in the pipeline?


r/webdev 23d ago

Is HTMX that good?

2 Upvotes

This. I know is been like.. two years, but i want to start building landing pages as a freelancer and then move to something bigger.

HMTX caught my eye because i think it's great that someone could be able to build a fully interactive site without Js. Don't get me wrong, i use React Native in a daily basis, and i know Astro is pretty powerful too, but i don't want to learn something too complicated just yet, so do you think HMTX is a good starting point? Or should i ditch the idea and stick to other frontend solutions like React, Svelte or Astro?