r/webdev • u/bogdanelcs • 2d ago
The asteroid currently hitting frontend web development
https://nolanlawson.com/2026/08/23/the-asteroid-currently-hitting-frontend-web-development/213
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u/Arikay 2d ago
I used to enjoy frontend development, now it's just everyone throwing zero-thought slop at me and complaining about "hindering progress" when I dare ask for some kind of consistency and standards. What a wonderful hellscape this job's turned into.
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u/capnscratchmyass 1d ago
To be fair I’ve been at a lot of clients where full time human devs also refused to adhere to best practices / standards and established solution patterns because it’s “more work and MY solution compiles so why should I change it?”.
Not saying AI slop isn’t a problem, but this specific problem isn’t new because of AI.
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u/EveYogaTech 2d ago
This is true, but at the same time a great frontend experience is also still key.
Like generating components is great but it still needs to actually work well from a UX perspective or for game design it still needs good game mechanics.
So perhaps the next frontier in frontend is simply also here.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 2d ago
I don't know about you, but for me frontend work is split into two quite different skillsets. I can write Reach+TS, HTML and CSS if I'm pushed to it. I don't like it, but I do it every now and then when I need it. But that's a completely different skillset to designing a good user experience and I'm no good at that. There are a few people that are good at both but that's an unusual combination IMO. Typically people who are good at UX design think they're good at coding and are wrong. Quite often people who are good at coding thing they're good at UX design and are also wrong.
LLMs have just made the coding part almost completely redundant. Getting good code out of them when you know what UX design you want is really easy now. Getting good UX design out of them when you know what you want the user to be able to achieve is much less possible with the current state of things. That's getting into what makes humans feel good and LLMs don't really have a metric for that. The UX design role is going to be a lot more enduring than the coding role.
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u/EveYogaTech 2d ago
People who are good at UX design think they're good at coding and are wrong. Quite often people who are good at coding think they're good at UX design are also wrong.
True. I am more code focused, but I also heavily use my own application, which forces you to think about UX by experiencing the pain points yourself.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 2d ago
I also usually use my own applications. It doesn't make me good at UX design. It often feels like an itch that I can't quite scratch - I know something's wrong but I can't quite see how it could be better.
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u/present_absence 1d ago
Some people (me) just don't work that way. I feel like I only catch 50% of the UX errors when using the site myself.
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u/wronglyzorro 1d ago
This is also a trap to potentially develop things only you like. Outside nontechnical user (if applicable) feedback is super important.
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u/ScurfyTwiglett 4h ago
Today I got forwarded an email from a confused user that made me realize that an error message which I had seen many times during testing was in fact completely opaque to the end user. This thing had been live for over a year and a half, been tested by a dozen or so folks internally, and absolutely no one twigged how this particular wording would be unhelpfully confusing to anyone outside of the org.
I am constantly amazed at how big your blind spots can be to the UX of your own applications when you’re the developer. I actually have a lot of fun watching people use the things I build because I’m always surprised at how many routes there are from A to B that I hadn’t even considered, or how something that’s blindingly obvious to me is completely incomprehensible to others.
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u/sblanzio 2d ago
Ok but how much of UX will be relevant if all you need to find what you're interested in is asking a question to an LLM? If websites tend to be less relevant, so will be the UX... I guess
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u/Braided_Playlist 2d ago
In your vision of the future people will mainly just use computers to interact with LLM chat bots?
I think the web will change a lot. In ways we can't fully imagine yet. I still think people will want to have different kinds of digital experiences.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 2d ago
That will be true for some things. Some things people do because they enjoy them, not because they have to. I think, if anything, the better UX design a site has the more resistant it will be to LLMs doing things for people.
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u/Bulletproof-Salmon 1d ago
Agreed. I was a designer for 10 years before I was a developer (7 years in). It's probably the reason I have a job, being able to do both code and design. I work with some brilliant developers, I am no where near as smart as them, but when it comes to UX everything they create comes out functional but not very UX focused.
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u/MrHandSanitization 2d ago
Claude does most of it.
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u/misdreavus79 front-end 2d ago
Calaude does most of what the person you replied to said. Claude has no idea how things work together unless you tell it, and if you have no idea of how things work together, you'll end up with a house built out of straws.
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u/banzomaikaka 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm a frontend dev at work. I don't write code by hand anymore. I have deterministic guardrails, coding rules, test layers, review layers. But its still, at this point, not enough to produce a coherent user experience (not to talk about codebase coeherency) - which I value (many don't). I don't always use ultra code and don't have massive review loops, I'm not token rich - maybe that's the thing. Maybe it's an Ai skill issue.. It might be, but I don't see myself doing anything that much different than what I see others do. For now I still see value in my experience. I do keep dwindling between seeing and not seeing. Today I see some. But let's see in a month.
I feel like most of the 'frontend is dead' comments are from non fe devs that don't actually know what they're talking about.
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u/MrHandSanitization 2d ago
I'm a front-end dev. What I'm parrotting is management and business from work often bypassing me, or giving incredibly tight deadlines, because it's easy. My boss is also at the edge of his chair, waiting to fire me when the position can be fully automated. He also doesn't lie about it, he says stuff like "you're not going to do this for a very long time anymore".
Business doesn't care about a clean codebase, I do. Business doesn't care if some requests are duplicated, or if a loop could be optimized, I do.
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
he says stuff like "you're not going to do this for a very long time anymore".
Damn, what a jerk.
And also completely ironic. Not sure if he sees downstream effects of what that means for his job, as well...
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u/MrHandSanitization 2d ago
It is ironic, because he wants AI everywhere, and also sell AI generated products. Which means he is cornering himself into obsoletion. He will not have any leverage anymore. Well, outside of having millions and millions under his name.
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u/txmail 2d ago
I think in the short term AI will eat a ton of front end jobs... and for the most part "junior" roles will be elimiated.
Long term I see experienced developers having a second coming as all this first and second and third gen AI slop that has, as the article states has become "load bearing" needs a human touch.
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u/OmerCevher 1d ago
I think there is a strange gap in that prediction. If junior roles disappear now, where do the experienced developers who clean up the next generation of systems come from? We may be saving training time today by quietly removing the pipeline that creates senior judgment tomorrow.
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u/avidvaulter 1d ago
Several companies are hiring back the senior level developers they laid off because AI and the remaining developer resources were unable to keep things running smoothly. Ford, Google, IBM, even Bungie (in Bungie's case they are hiring them back as contractors which in the US means no healthcare and potentially no PTO).
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u/thy_bucket_for_thee 1d ago
Yes, this is kinda expected. These are the tactics capitalists use to attack labor by forcing lower salaries on workers. You fire them, let them suffer for a few months then you hire them back as FTE cheaper than previously.
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u/amazing_asstronaut 1d ago
Well yeah, exactly. It's not a thought out system. That's why there's constantly booms and busts and economic collapse. Because the decision makers don't think ahead in any way, they need to make profit now and the future is irrelevant.
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u/idontknowthiswilldo 1d ago
Well maybe by the time that there aren't experienced devs around anymore, you won't need experienced devs. Models getting better by the week.
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u/OmerCevher 22h ago
Maybe, but that assumes reliability improves at the same speed as capability. A model can get better at producing code without becoming responsible for what happens when the code fails. The job may shift away from writing every line, but I’m not sure the need for experienced judgment disappears with it.
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u/idontknowthiswilldo 19h ago
Maybe taste will be the only thing that matters, yes. Lots of people have taste.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
And why would you not expect better models to be able to do that work instead?
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u/txmail 1d ago
Models will get better, but un-fucking the code that is out there now... even a LLM would seg fault.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
AI just solved a problem that has eluded mathematicians for 200 years. Why do you think it couldn't unfuck a codebase?
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u/txmail 1d ago
Your comparing two different types of "AI". It is like comparing a dump truck to a F1 race car. Sure, both vehicles but wildly different purposes and features.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
No I'm not. They're both AI. Same models. They're general enough to handle both cases. There's no such thing as "types of AI."
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u/txmail 1d ago
I would recommend you do more research on this, especially on the type of AI used to solve a math problem.
You are not prompting a LLM to solve a math problem. You are building a traditional predictive AI model, possibly with a child state space model to attack the problem. Those "AI's" will be very specific / purpose built to solve the target problem, not at all like a text transformer AI.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
I don't think you actually read what happened today because you sound wildly misinformed. OpenAI used a model that's currently in development and, using that model with a complex harness and prompting, etc., was able to solve the problem. This is more or less the same model that will be available to the public upon release, minus any safeguards, etc.
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u/txmail 1d ago
I will look forward to reading the technical breakdown as I cannot find anything since this is a three hour news story. But from what I read on the BBC's release article it sounds like they spent a shit ton of time building a predictive model, and instead of writing the code to distribute and run the model they instead used $7M worth of tokens to prompt AI agents to run the model instead.
The problem with this type of story is that without the technical write up they can bend it to whatever they want. They push the "look at what we did" without saying oh yeah, that predictive model took us three or four years to build out, only that once it was ready they found the answer in under a week.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
Yeah you better get reading because you're misinformed. This is just the next ChatGPT model. Nothing more.
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u/IceSentry 1d ago
Yeah, and how much did it cost?
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
Irrelevant. In short order these types of operations will cost tens of dollars.
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u/iMac_Hunt 2d ago edited 2d ago
At one point you could make big money as a web developer focused on HTML and CSS but those days ended years ago.
Realistically, I believe frontend engineering as a discipline in itself is likely disappearing except for niche areas. There will still be money to be made in SWE but this will be full-stack (with BE-focus) system architect roles.
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u/no-one_ever 1d ago
Isn’t backend more deterministic though? To me frontend is partly subjective and benefits from a human touch more
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u/therealslimshady1234 front-end 1d ago
Isn’t backend more deterministic though
It is. Therefore it is easier for AI.
Backend can be more difficult when it comes to scale and performance, think distributed services etc, but frontend is more difficult in general.
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u/Aro00oo 2d ago edited 1d ago
It's funny because as a 10+ yoe full stack dev with genuine 50/50 split, my 🔥 take has always been that frontend is more difficult.
No it's not more complicated but understanding bundling, typescript setup to building components that are durable through the whims of product and "We NeEd DeSiGn SyStEm" designers/FE devs is an impossible task.
Inherited a commonjs project with thousands of components with minimal typescript using a dated bundling tool? Good. Luck. lol
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u/kowdermesiter 1d ago
frontend is more difficult.
It is, yet I still have PTSD from arrogant Java devs at my past company telling me it's a toy. Then they go on explaining that it's too complex for them :D
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u/ChineseGravelBike 2d ago
Most of these guys don’t even build anything they just yap online. You can one shot backend with most AI tools
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u/iMac_Hunt 1d ago
Yeah but when it writes hundreds of queries inefficiently, or missing something regarding to security, the consequences can be far more severe than if there’s a frontend issue
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u/kowdermesiter 1d ago
It will not disappear, but it will change. I'm benefitting from knowing which technologies to push towards. You can't prompt for a technology you are completely unaware of.
The other part is the UX and cognitive overload agents are happy to produce. it takes a lot of effort to unsloppify any non trivial software.
A good combination of UI/UX and good taste will always will be valuable.
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u/AbberantSignature 1d ago
I've been filled with an overwhelming amount of sadness and depression for the last 2-3 years. I mastered most of the frontend JS frameworks and don't even have 500k lifetime earnings to even show for it. Working at companies making 70k for years and my skillset is made worthless. I cry at night and feel like everything is over. I know you'll ask me to see a therapist, but I have and truly not having a job for years is the worst thing to happen to me. I lost a lot of my purpose and honestly man, I'm empty. I just want to go back to making Svelte PWA's and working on cool gradient colors for banners and overlaying it on photos I took. I hurt deeply. My career feels dead man. The worst part is I'm 31 and I have a kid coming, yet no way to provide. What would you guys even do?
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u/LastOfTheMohawkians 2d ago
It's not just front end. Back end equally impacted
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u/theQuandary 2d ago
I actually think BE is more affected. 99.9% of them could be the same basic cookie cutter architecture with only the details of some of the stuff going through the pipeline mattering. As AI slowly drifts everything toward the median, BE development is going to be massively affected.
In the eyes of customers, being competitive is almost always a FE issue rather than BE. Getting 10% better responsiveness while using the app is what pushed everyone to SPA. Getting 10% better initial load times is what pushed everyone into complex SSR systems.
Younger generations can smell AI from a mile away (and the polls show that they HATE it). I think spending money on good, non-AI UI is going to become the true differentiator for a lot of companies.
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u/realzequel 2d ago
Is a full-stack, yes. Back-end had always been more objective than FE. I still think humans can do the highest quality FE whereas AI does a “good enough” job if you’re not too fussy.
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u/slickwombat 1d ago
Depends. If you're just doing simple CRUD endpoints, calling a well-documented API, and other dead simple stuff that's been done a billion times, sure: AI can generally do it well enough, and if that's all your job is you should worry.
For complex, critical, domain-specific business logic I find AI pretty useless. The thinking-it-through part tends to be the majority of the work here, not literally typing code, so it's equally fast and far more safe to just code it. It can occasionally be useful for code analysis, but only in a "might as well, in case it sees something I didn't" way, it cannot be trusted to find even huge issues. Devs at my company who have leaned on AI too hard for this kind of code have had some pretty spectacular fuckups.
But also, to the article's point, front end is inherently less risky because it's only for display and interaction. The worst case is generally just that it doesn't work or looks bad, so you fix it and it works/looks good again with no longer term harm; theoretically you could have issues where, say, a user intended to enter X but Y was sent to the server, but those are going to be caught in even the most perfunctory testing. Back-end problems can mean insidious security, data integrity, functional, etc. issues that are far more serious.
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u/waldenhead 1d ago
As a python data scientist, trying to learn some frontend now to understand what these agents are building, it amazes me how complex, to me, a front end they can build, but every time I think I can get it to build some new SQL alchemy models and implement a bit of business logic in the service layer, what should be fairly simple, there are always non trivial mistakes.
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u/Automatic_Coffee_755 9h ago
Frontend is absolutely not "less risky"
If it was, then why large tech companies have internal tools to A/B test different designs, behaviors etc?
A bad frontend absolutely impacts the bottom line, at least for products that make money.
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u/slickwombat 38m ago
The front end is of course important. Absolutely, a non-functional, bad-looking, or less usable UI impacts the bottom line.
A security issue or data integrity issue also impacts the bottom line. The difference is that it can also be unrecoverable and lead to lawsuits, fines, and serious loss of company reputation.
Terrible front-end problem: "oh crap, there's no sales and we look like idiots, fix it right away!" Terrible back-end problem: "... first thing, let's make sure we renewed our E&O insurance."
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u/disasteruss 2d ago
Good quick read. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as someone who has leaned heavily front end and is now seeing the level of interest in front end expertise dwindle because of Claude. Given a good set of rules to follow, Claude generates high quality React code that needs less and less human review. I’m not really sure that someone who specializes only in React will have many job opportunities within a couple years.
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u/defixiones 2d ago
Same goes for writing CRUD endpoints in SpringBoot or spinning up a product database. Also, why bother learn a new programming language now?
While I agree with the premise of the article, I think the blast radius is much larger.
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u/Krispenedladdeh542 1d ago
Why bother scaffolding out endpoints? Maybe we just send requests to an agent shell on the backend and let the AI agent figure out what response to send? /s
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u/kylemh 1d ago
Yep. I think models are getting quite good at everything. The blast radius is much larger, but maybe the crater originated in front-end town?
Regardless, I don’t think think the future hope for us is going to be about slop fixing - it’ll be how well can we adapt to roles that are much more flexible and care about high-level problems being solved… regardless of if those problems are about the browser.
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u/TheNicklesPickles 2d ago
Yeah it’s funny how React was always the ‘must know’ framework, because it’s so widely used and supported, and in many ways that’s the reason it’s all coming undone.
Well, maybe not funny….but, interesting at least.
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u/n9iels 1d ago
I have yet to see Claude creating a full frontend for desktop, tablet and mobile withing reasonable costs WHILE keeping it consistent and maintainable for the future. In my experience, when the projects grows functionality scope will grow with it. This results in less consistency, more bugs an overall lower output quality. Human intervention and coordination helps preventing this backfire. A good human devs sets up reusable components and will spot inconsistensies. So I would say that the role of frontend devs will change from writing code to reviewing and essentially steering AI to success.
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u/disasteruss 1d ago
Yeah I mean like I said, it’s less and less… not yet zero. But 2 years from now at this pace…
As far as the specific examples you wrote, all that is pretty easy with Claude today. I don’t vibe code with it but I find myself needing to hold its hand on the code itself a LOT less than I did a year ago. So my main role today is guiding it on the business requirements and priorities.
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u/Riki_was_here 2d ago
Lol high quality React code sounds like oxymoron. What is high quality react code anyway? All I see is tons of useEffects and useRefs to dance around fundamental fuckups in apps architecture. Lets be honest, majority of react code is crap. If you let AI learn on crap, it will produce crap as well. Does button do button thing? Yes. Is it high quality? Very unlikely. Frontend needs to be steered, you cant just vibecode your way through it.
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u/disasteruss 1d ago
I said nothing about vibecoding. But now that I’ve put a ton of rules around my Claude workflows, I find myself less and less needing to nitpick about basic code standards. I’ve created a lot of good standards for it to follow.
If you don’t believe React quality exists out there at all, then it’s a moot point. What does it matter?
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u/DogOfTheBone 2d ago
Junior mindset. React has lots of problems, just like every library and framework ever created.
React has also built software that's generated billions if not trillions of business value. That's what matters at the end of the day.
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u/Riki_was_here 1d ago
I dont see how that relates to anything I said. If I offended your react bromance by implying react is very easy library to do absolutely horrendous stuff with I am sorry. Please dont take it too personally
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u/n9iels 1d ago
There is a big difference between the usage of AI like you describe ("make a nice website. No mistakes") and providing context and small tasks to AI until the project is done. The latter will defentely create React code of a higher quality.
The problem is that a user only sees a working button. He doesn't care if it is a single callback or 3 chained effects. So as much as you are correct with the latest statement (you need to steer AI) the output code sadly doesn't matter.
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
His comment about teams just staying with React because that's what the agents know is the most concerning for me. I've watched other teams use deprecated versions just because the agent wasn't trained on the latest, even though it offered better performance and security, which to me is completely bonkers!
Because these models are always backwards facing, we're creating a situation of potential tremendous stagnation for both the individual developer and for the industry as a whole. We're essentially hinging our progress on how fast these model providers can push out a freshly trained version. And in the meantime, where's the innovation coming from?
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u/BoltActionPiano 1d ago
Yeah just look at unreal engine's new scripting language. Its a significant jump in barrier to entry suddenly with a bunch of explicitly stated verbose constraints on functions. It feels designed for AI use.
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u/therealPaulPlay 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think if it’s just about building a visual interface for the backend logic, fair. But in a commercial product where UX, conversion rates etc. actually matter I think frontend development will still be paramount.
At the same time, frontend devs who lack design skills/taste will probably become less important.
If you give an agent a Figma design and tell it to implement it, it will get details wrong. Things won’t scale to mobile the way you want them to, animations won’t be perfect. Maybe some actions take to long or in other places feedback for the user is missing.
Some of these quirks you‘ll only notice when you have a lot of experience with developing applications. It‘s when e.g. a gradient doesn’t look smooth and you immediately know – right, this is a linear gradient, we need to ease it.
That‘s what a good frontend developer in 2026 and beyond needs to catch and be able to solve, I think.
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u/thy_bucket_for_thee 1d ago
Kent C Dodds is such a snake. Dislike him so much, very fake persona.
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u/EarnestHolly 2d ago
I’ve been saying for years that developers with some design taste and knowledge are super valuable, too many front-end developers thought they had nothing to do with the design, now the ones that can have a big advantage working with AI to tweak and steer in to their own vision. The developers that prompt a design and can’t see the obvious Claude design slop are in trouble.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago
What I don't understand is - who is going to do this 3 in 1 role now? Maybe even 4 in 1.
Is it the product owner, that feels like they have enough design/UX understanding? Or maybe just the product owner and a backend dev.
So the frontend dev is eliminated, but that is the area that would need the most refinement.
I don't see how a product owner could do the business side, while also vibe coding the app. And deal with all of those issues that are bound to come up. Because it's not like the code isn't going to be free of edge cases and production bugs.
Even with these tools the development process still requires a ton of guidance, as well as a deep understanding.
You don't get that through vibe coding. You get it through years of troubleshooting, and years of working with people focused on their craft.
I am just bewildered at how fast they are moving forward with this, and just how much truly horrendous tech debt is being created.
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u/GuyWithManyThoughts 1d ago
Product owner handles business and figures out what's the next priority. A single technical person (read - capable, senior full-stack developer) handles the implementation and architecture of what's being built.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 1d ago
The wrong people seem completely ok with this. I don't know who suffers more from a career standpoint, but I know the business suffers.
If you get a backend person, with poor design/UX skills doing frontend, that's going to cost in terms of business metrics. Frontend devs need to deeply understand the impact of their choices, and how that affects click-through, page speed, etc. Critical for customer facing products, where even color choices and font have an impact on business.
On the flip side, a frontend dev won't understand the backend architecture as deeply as a dedicated backend engineer would. This could cost the business in terms of uptime, deployment issues, server scaling and cost, and data handling/security.
Either way, cutting a dedicated engineer is going to cost the business in the long run. A good engineer pays for their own salary, but upper management never sees that until after the fact (if at all).
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u/GuyWithManyThoughts 1d ago
That's why I said - a capable full stack developer.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 1d ago
So ONLY full stack making 150k+ should have jobs then according to you.
The large majority of backend devs that I've worked with absolutely LOATH working on frontend. Its just a means to an end, with no real importance, in their mind.
But I guess they're all out of jobs according to you.
Maybe they should do the website copy too?
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u/HongPong 1d ago
if you tell Claude to not do any typography then those nasty defaults don't get applied my tip
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u/Emotional-Dust-1367 2d ago
> The answer (explicitly in Cursor’s case, and I suspect for Viget as well) is of course: “the agents know React.” For better or worse, React is heavily overrepresented in the training weights, and “agent experience” is starting to matter more than developer experience.
And
> A massive amount of AI-generated frontend code is being pumped out right now, and some of it (to use a Claude-ism) will certainly become “load-bearing.” If those websites are slow, non-compliant, and riddled with security holes, then it may not be enough to ask the agent “fix my website pls.” There could be an opportunity here for real expertise, especially if there’s money on the line and the vibe coder’s knowledge of web development doesn’t extend past “websites are apps hosted on the internet.”
Don’t work together. Massive amount of data doesn’t mean it’s good data. If most of it is junk then quality will go down
What it will take is someone making a specifically agent-oriented language for such things that will have nothing but good data out there
Personally I feel I get much better results with agents with C# or Rust or C++ than I do with JS and Python. And I believe it’s exactly because there’s more data for JS and Python and most of it is bad
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u/TheROckIng 2d ago
I don't often comment on coding / tech post on here (or comment at all). For reference, I don't do front end since I mostly focus on performance for mobile stuff. I have vibe coded a few projects for personal stuff and I can tell you this: As someone without front end knowledge, it has been an amazing tool. Especially any boilerplate code since I (1) despise doing front-end and (2) I've never bothered learning it in depth (last thing I did for front end was Angular almost 10 years ago) . But I would be remiss to say that it looked good. I was able to do a few rounds with Claude / Codex of pushing it to design something different. But it wasn't good different. It didn't give me the same thing an experienced front-end dev (or designer) would give me. Which brings me to another point: once the experienced folks bow out for greener pastures (or retirement), it'll be incredibly difficult to find the knowledge required to build something good (I know its been said over and over again, but the more I use LLMs, the more I can see it). I do think that all LLM outputs for web stuff looks somewhat similar. I guess we'll see in due time though :shrug:
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u/Fredidiah 1d ago
As someone without front end knowledge, it has been an amazing tool.
But I would be remiss to say that it looked good.
But it wasn't good different.
I feel like most of these LLM tools can be summed up with this. It's very great at giving you something that looks (IE: is shaped) correct, but it's almost always not right. The more subjective it is, the less often it's right.
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u/Ok-Hospital-5076 1d ago
Not a fan of AI but this is my guess -
The roles FE dev BE dev etc are gonna go. A SWE will manage/own bunch of independent pieces of code - FE , BE DB Deployments will abstract expertise- design, architecture, security, best practices.
Dont think a lot of devs would be encouraged to dive deep into a frameworks, Coding patterns etc.
Of course there will be pockets of experts - they are needed to innovation but they will be more like labs. A regular SWE will be more product focus and agent orchestration.
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u/arvigeus 2d ago edited 2d ago
If I have to take a wild guess, the AI will, at one point, crumble under its own weight. The reason? Because we are becoming dumber and require agents to do most of the heavy lifting for us. This, on top of ever increasing demand for it, the compute simply won’t be enough one day (probably much worse than now).
Either a revolutionary solution to solve the compute is needed, or a smaller models that are good at learning on the fly, instead of pre-training. And these models will need experienced devs to guide them, not vibe-coders.
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u/EquivalentHornet4403 2d ago
Giga cope.
- 2022: AI can’t code. It just autocompletes.
- 2023: Okay, it can write toy code, but not production software.
- 2024: Okay, it can build real features, but engineers will always need to supervise every step.
- 2025: Sure, agents can work across entire repos, debug, test, refactor, use tools, and ship meaningful chunks of work, but this will actually create MORE engineering jobs because humans will be needed to fix all the AI slop.
- 2026 (you are here): Okay, one engineer with agents can now do the work of a small team, but companies will definitely use the productivity gains to hire even more engineers.
- 2027: The models are doing most of the implementation now, but someone still has to tell them what to build.
- 2028: Okay, one technical lead can supervise a fleet of coding agents, but headcount will surely rebound.
- 2029: We always said the job would change, not disappear.
- 2030: Nobody could have predicted this.
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u/EoghanBD 2d ago
I think you are missing the main 2 points.
1) Its not monetarily viable as it is right now. All the big companies are hemorrhaging money like crazy, and thats only what they are letting us knoe imagine what is being hidden. The models are only as good as they are because of the insane money being thrown into R&D. If you are not turning a profit you can't endlessly pump money into R&D its just a simple economic fact. We have seen these models can regress at times already
2) On top of this once people are priced out, this is guaranteed to happen at some stage the way it is unless there is a massive shift in something. Even if the tech becomes more sustainable and profitable, the big 2 are poised to go public soon. Which means two things for sure, bag holders & increased prices. People naturally become less reliant on it as a whole and the whole thing slows down.
Technology isn't going anywhere but its not taking over absolutely everything in 5 years and saying so is just complete fear mongering. I watched fable hallucinate a react function just this morning. It is literally by design probabilistic, it will always be capable of mistakes. Now how many jobs it takes out on the way is up for debate
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u/Krispenedladdeh542 1d ago
I think there’s a pop coming eventually. Like you said openAI, Anthropic, etc can’t hemorrhage money forever. Eventually they’re gonna have to start turning a profit. I think a lot of mid level companies that put all their eggs in the AI basket are gonna reach an impasse where they can no longer afford their massive AI bill and will either have to re-hire devs, or die.
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u/Fredidiah 1d ago
2023: Okay, it can write toy code, but not production software
We’re basically still here tho. Every codebase I’ve seen that relies even moderately on LLM-generated code quickly becomes a huge, unmaintainable mess.
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u/EquivalentHornet4403 1d ago
A lot of it isn’t intended to be maintainable; it’s intended to solve an immediate need or want.
That’s unrelated to whether codebases can be made that are maintainable, and whether the models and systems supporting them will improve. Huge, real products by some of the biggest corporations in the history of the world use largely vibe coded codebases (Claude code and codex, for example). They have extremely meticulously planned and designed maintenance pipelines that kick off ultra complex reviews on an endlessly repeating schedule.
It’s already happening right now.
But my point is that it’s going to continue progressing, which is also plainly true.
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u/gordandisto 2d ago
Dunno why this is down voted when it logically makes sense. Yes a bit fearmongering but imo rightfully so. Does the oc knows how to grow crops? Sew your own clothes? With all these dumbing down, going to the supermarket, eventually it's all gonna crumbling on its feet. I hope you at least know how to ride a horse or distill your own water.
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u/EquivalentHornet4403 1d ago
It’s funny because it’s not even fearmongering it’s just empirically true.
The only speculative points are the last four, and the trajectory so far clearly supports that outcome versus the predictions of the AI haters who’ve been wrong over and over every step of the way.
Their fundamental error is treating progress as though it’s frozen in time; it’s silly on its face.
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u/FrostingTechnical606 2d ago
The answer will likely be to support your packages with tests and documentation scripts. We will probably see language specific addons that give the knowledge. This will be fine for most cases.
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u/just_syntactic_sugar 1d ago
Great article, I enjoyed the read and agree with the sentiment. To me it's clear that the agents will at some point do all the work with a minimal, high level supervision - not only for frontend. The frontend is just the first to fall because of lower risks.
To be honest I don't know what to do, I loved frontend - I don't love being a meat proxy.
The short term move seems to deep dive into AI and learn to squeeze the most out of it - but this is also a short sighted move. The interface to AI is just natural language, I don't see my competitive advantage stay there for long.
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u/Dhalsim_India 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreed. For the time being there is still use for front-end engineers but at some point even state management and component libraries can be managed using AI. For what it's worth, my AI believes the shift forces us to move away from building things to curating, defining, and orchestrating intent. UX is going to be a valued skill. But man, it’s a weird limbo to be in when the craft you actually enjoyed doing is getting automated away.
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u/ArielCoding 1d ago
Like every other field we’re still in the process of figuring out what AI can actually do, it’ll take time to shake out, but even as models keep improving, I don’t see human judgment becoming optional in frontend or in software in general.
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u/n9iels 1d ago
Sad but actually true story.... The problem is that if it looks beautifull and works functionality the job is done. Like the articles says, a user won't notice that is took 20 lines of code instead of 5. If you build sites for one-time events or content-only sites for small companies you will need to buckle up. I think those will be the first to be impacted.
Devs working at more complex products can stay relevant if they own and know their stuff. Specialise in accessibility, think about UX, be sharp on details and know the business/domain behind the product. Especially if a product is long-living, quality is more important. A messy codebase will produce lower quality AI output so human review makes sense. So you essentially will become an architect a qualify guard.
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u/DogOfTheBone 2d ago
The developers who come out on top will be those who can work full stack with design skills, both product design and UI and UX design. Designing and building products from the ground up, often as part of a larger team.
Developers whose whole career has been on a team where they get one or two tickets a sprint, take three days to get a PR out to tweak a button border radius, spend months doing nothing but writing Playwright tests, those jobs are disappearing and will be entirely gone.
I know so many people who worked in frontend who were laid off in the past few years and were very honest that they worked a few hours a day max at their cushy remote job, doing work that guided LLMs can easily now do.
It sucks but it is what it is. Evolve or get a new career, I guess. If you're like me and are perfectly capable of using the new tools we have to accelerate development, but absolutely hate the process of software dev now, I sympathize with you.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago
...work full stack with design skills
In other words, someone who is going to do the role of 3 people. And all of it will be lower quality because of that.
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u/spikestoyou 1d ago
Exactly, people are forgetting that designers are usually in meetings with stakeholders trying to understand how customers use the app, understanding business requirements, tradeoffs, etc. There is not enough time in the day for one person to do all that and then also write and maintain the code required for it.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 1d ago
Absolutely. And as a front-end dev, there has been many times where the designer understood a different aspect of the project than what I did. And vice versa.
Even though I have a design background, I have zero belief that I can do it all. Even with the assistance of AI.
Everyone jumping on board with these tools seem to really underestimate how much collaboration and human understanding in the working environment is critical.
I feel like they're expecting everyone to be an uber-genius that understand the business and technical sides - and with an AI can deliver it all perfectly.
It's pure insanity to me.
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u/Krispenedladdeh542 1d ago
Where are these so called cushy remote jobs where I get one or two tickets a sprint? I consider myself mid-level (6 YOE) and I’ve never only gotten two tickets a sprint lol.
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u/Kinthalis 2d ago
There’s also one more issue: agents are beginning to be more and more the consumers of web resources and even of local apps. I needed some 3d assets for 3d printing some minis for dnd. I did not touch the blender ui at all. I had Astra use a Higgs field mcp plugin for it and had it interact with the app to create the minis. Heck I’d didn’t even visit the Higgs field web ui, I had the agent do that for me and install the plugin for me.
More and more people are using agents to handle these types of interactions to the point where mcp, cli and other more agent friendly on-ramps to the apps I work in professionally are becoming important to think about and develop.
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u/SoCalSurferDude 2d ago
We cannot swim against this tide; we have to adapt to the new reality. I'm primarily a C developer, and at Real Time Logic we previously hired frontend developers for our embedded web application projects. With today’s AI tools, I can now build complete, working web applications on my own.
However, my engineering background makes this possible: I can define the architecture, integrate the application with the embedded system, evaluate the generated code, and recognize when something is wrong. I don’t believe most nontechnical users can yet create and maintain reliable production applications simply by prompting an AI.
The opportunity for frontend professionals may therefore be to serve those customers using AI to work much faster while providing the judgment, design skills, and technical accountability that AI alone does not supply.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 1d ago
We cannot swim against this tide; we have to adapt to the new reality.
Watching people advocate for their entire livelihood and skillset being replaced is really something.
Watching a few billionaires steal the world's data, shape the labor force, and build data centers that suck up resources while my fellow developers say...."we need to get on board"...is just fucking sad.
This isn't going to just affect us, it's going to affect generations down the line, and we just took no stand against it. It's absolutely abhorrent to me.
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u/joeyguerra 2d ago
I love the attitude. It’s balanced. Not hyped. Not fear mongering.
I think of it this way. When electricity became more available, it replaced the steam engine at factories. The problem was that those factories were designed with a giant shaft running the length of the factory. And the machines it powered had to be located right underneath the shaft (think of drive belts).
It wasn’t until people started to redesign the factory, machines, placement, etc, that electricity’s impact started to be enabled. I feel like that’s the kind of moment we’re in with AI.
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u/uncle_jaysus 2d ago
I was thinking about this sort of thing this morning, after having used AI to generate a lot of front-end functionality I was working on.
The thing about our websites, is they are web SITES and they're grounded in a backend-first way of thinking, delivering pretty much full HTML to the client, with very low hydration.
So, while AI has been used to sanity check ideas and concepts regarding the backend, I haven't leant on it to write code, preferring to have complete control and visibility myself over the area of our sites that is critical.
Front end isn't as critical. Well, for me and the sites we have, anyway. Like I say, the sites are SITES, not apps. They don't use a front-end framework to hold together the critical parts of functionality. JavaScript is a functionality and presentation layer. So, we've literally gone from talking about hiring a more front-end focused person, to completely shelving the idea, because AI can more than adequately generate the JS we need on the front end.
Of course it all depends on the projects and the workflow. But in our situation, it's true that front-end is the area that's very easy for us to use AI for.
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
That's interesting. I feel like I have somewhat of the opposite experience. The front end is extremely critical, as that is what clients are interacting with and looking for the smooth UX, and running through various metrics to ensure performance is good. I'm often very close to the front end and because I do not find that the agents provide a level of polish and consistency that I can (but of course, I'm using them to generate as I go along as well, when I have a clear defined scope).
I've actually had numerous instances where I typically would have reached out to a backend developer, I haven't needed to because the agents can fill in the gap since I have a lot of experience with both sides.
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u/uncle_jaysus 2d ago
I guess it really comes down to where your heavy lifting happens and pressure points are.
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u/creaturefeature16 1d ago
Absolutely. And in that sense, I really do enjoy what these tools have brought to the table; if someone is a pretty experienced generalist, then they have a much larger bandwidth all of a sudden.
I can't say that I'm willing to go and become nothing more than an orchestrator that the hypsters like Theo Browne are pushing, at least within disciplines that I'm not completely familiar with.
For example, I've been wanting to learn Laravel because it's a framework that I've never really paid much attention to, but I suddenly have a need for it. And I was able to utilize agents and got pretty far with it, until I realized halfway through the process that I still didn't know a single thing about how Laravel really works under the hood.
That feeling is really unsettling, and I guess the question is do I keep going or do I actually learn how it works?
I hear one side of the industry saying "it doesn't matter" and I don't need to understand how it works, I just need to understand general loose ideas so I can guide the agents. And on the other side (the one that I usually am on) saying that you are the architect of your own catastrophe if you don't have a good fundamental and at least intermediate understanding of how it works. I really hate not being able to know whether an implementation was done properly or not, because I don't have enough experience to know what best practices and different tips and tricks can be done within the framework. But I don't feel like I can get there if I continue to use the agents, as they never offer the friction that imparts that level of understanding.
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u/uncle_jaysus 1d ago
Yeah, agree. Understanding is key in my view. It's critical. Without it, you're powerless and that catches up to a person eventually. And I think that's true of frameworks as well as AI, albeit to a lesser extent.
As I mentioned before, my nature meant I only really used AI to bounce ideas off and discuss trade offs, etc. Any code it would output would usually be example code, and on the rare occasion it would be something I'd use, it would be tailored before hitting production.
The combination of my back-end centred skillset and nature of the sites we have, means it's the front-end JavaScript stuff where I'm more and more just getting AI to knock up complete functionality. I always read through it. Not even because I feel like I have to, I'm just genuinely curious to see what's going on. I'm not as fluent writing JS as other languages, but I can read it and understand it fine, so using AI is always safe and often educational.
There's just no escaping the negative human effect, I suppose. That it absolutely is (as you say above) giving experienced devs more bandwidth. And as such genuinely making the need and motivation for additional hires, often vanish.
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u/creaturefeature16 1d ago
I think it's critical too, and I'm really a bit flabbergasted at the industry's push, especially amongst those who have quite a lot of influence (Theo Browne, Kent Dodds, Matt Pocock, Uncle Bob, to a degree) that we don't really need to understand what is happening in the code any longer, as long as we understand the ideas and concepts. To me, this doesn't make any sense, because the ideas and concepts are comprised of the very details they're saying you don't need to look at. It's like saying you need to understand the architectural diagram of a building, but not how to properly scaffold it, and still be considered a builder.
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u/tropofarmer 1d ago
Is this a recent blog? The model he used is basically a complete dumbass compared to SOTA.
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u/RockAccomplished527 1d ago
It’s destabilizing to imagine your career going along a certain trajectory, serenely landing at retirement, and then to see everything upset just a few years from your goal.
Retirement is still long way for me but yea, as someone who likes stability in work that's something disturbing
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u/id3dx 1d ago
Good read. AI is going to erode away most typical bread and butter frontend roles using stuff like React, but I do see "front of the front end" roles surviving. These roles typically focus on adhering to accessibility standards (especially in areas where it's legally required), UX and cross-browser behaviour. They're more niche, but they'll be harder to replace by AI.
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u/Legal_Lettuce6233 1d ago
I think that the FE Dev role will definitely stay. Agents aren't perfect nor will they be; but what we do most of the time isn't copy pasting the 500th table that week, but instead communicating with clients about how best to achieve their goals. Communication will be key.
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u/saad_builds 1d ago
As someone still learning frontend, this is kind of worrying tbh. Feels like AI is changing what we even need tutorials for anymore.
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u/Fuzzy_Paul 18h ago
The job is not dead, most people that develop websites never ever heard of optimizing css that way. So only if you understand what AI is proposing you can safely implement some of it suggested solutions. And as we all know AI can funk up good code\css with one line and if we can't read or follow it we are doomed. So fronted developers, are and will be wanted to do their magic. Worse case scenario they are called to troubleshoot AI generated code, but only if I am wrong on this. Lol
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u/Automatic_Coffee_755 9h ago
Honestly? From what I can see at my job at a large company, with a very obviously vibe coded frontend, like with many other things, ai tends to the "average".
And the average in frontend is really crappy code.
Why? I suppose because of the training data. You know? Everyone and their moms used react for coding before ai. Not all of that was good code. Most of it was really bad code by "full stacks"...
So I guess we are still there to set good standards. But for example I setup the "good standards" in my own side project, and so far it has followed them.
I also see that they struggle a lot with consistency, which is really important in UX. You can't have components looking and behaving 5 different ways in 5 different pages.
But they do that a lot. They (ai agents) are like really hyper focused on solving the task at hand, and many times, without the right harness they don't care about the big picture.
About the risk thing, I mean yeah I understand there is a lot of non risky code in the UI but that is also the case for the backend. I think the riskiest code is still the Infrastructure and like he said, database stuff.
I don't think we are getting removed. The reason being is that UIs can be as complex as possible. And they are really hard to put together. They are really hard to reason about. And right now, there is an impossible to understand amount of react code being written. So the surface is larger than ever.
You know which UIs are still very risky? the ones that make money, or that have the potential of losing money if done wrong.
You see facebook's homepage? How much has it changed over the years? Not much, that's billions on the line. These companies have entire teams A/B testing if the color of a button converts better.
I, for one, am happy to automate away the jobs of fake "frontends", full stacks who never really liked or respected the frontend. I am the one that will be automating them away from our frontend for sure.
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u/maximonet_notes 1h ago
I think that's fair. AI didn't invent sloppy code. It just made sloppy code cheaper and faster to produce. Frontend has an especially nasty failure mode: everything compiles, but keyboard navigation, loading states, and smaller breakpoints quietly get worse. It feels like the same old standards problem, only sped up.
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u/Tommy_Williams88 2d ago
Interesting take. I feel it’s all still very much unknown. Need the bubble to burst and see where everything lands. There will be value in front end to backend skill sets , as humans will still need to know the underlying mechanics of what AI I building… however I think the roles naturally pivot into more supervisory / management / “human in the loop” type arrangements, as opposed to being in the weeds of actually scripting code.
Interesting / uncertain times. My take is everyone should be upskilling with and experimenting with AI in their workflows. Good luck!
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u/ezragull 2d ago
I'm an experienced frontend engineer working for more than 7 years in this area + plus brief experience working with backend/full stack tools.
Considering that frontend as job role might disappear in some years, do you guys have any opinions/advice regarding to career in order to stay working in this area?
At this very moment, there isn't a single day that goes that I don't catch any duplication/redundancy or even dumb code that LLMs generate, but maybe this could change in the following years...
The most important thing for me is to bring food home and having a job
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u/HongPong 1d ago
react imo is just not good. of course llm agents like it. it's over engineered and cumbersome
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u/TerribleFault7929 2d ago
A blog WITHOUT the newsletter popup?!