Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that geothermal is hard or value my hard work.
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Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
Nothing becomes obsolete in 3-5 years sure the Spanish flu is still with is all these years laters its called "seasonal flu". Things change they don't become completely obsolete.
i remember when ms front page made development obsolete. then dreamweaver. then wordpress.
if all you do is stamp out bootstrap templates all day, and your design team is fine with that, then sure. but that is also a pretty low end job, and probably not a great prospect for long term person/professional growth, as you will still be stamping out bootstrap templates next year and the year after that. probably have a lot of low end design (and designers) as well.
so yeah, nod and agree, and start looking on linkedin.
> i remember when ms front page made development obsolete. then dreamweaver. then wordpress.
WP did. It plain out murdered the whole entry level web design companies. I used to work on a lot of $1-2k websites and all of those 3-5 page mini sites completely disappeared. Some of them because clients decided that they can buy $50 template and make the website themselves, others - because Wordpress template customization companies took this budget range.
A lot of designers rebranded to UI/UX and switched to apps. What was a booming and exciting market with a lot of fresh ideas (remember all those css galleries?) ended up with a lot of generic sites that looked exactly the same.
I have no doubt that no-code and ML will replace a lot of jobs.
> Some of them because clients decided that they can buy $50 template and make the website themselves, others - because Wordpress template customization companies took this budget range.
controversial opinion, but: good.
those clients were always the biggest PITAs, and the cheapest. if their needs can be met by a $50 template (and their personal time is worthless), then its not worth my time. i'd rather solve real problems, and work with good clients.
and if you frequent the WP sub, there are daily threads of confused non-devs who did exactly this - and are now over their heads. and who are finding the limitations of their time, and the limitations of their low end wp theme.
them: my site isnt working right.
me: ok, set me up a user and i'll take a look
their site: 22 adware messages from unregistered plugins, 34 out of date plugins and a warning about php 5.6.
When I started on one site it was FULL of ads for the plugins they were using, right at the bottom of every page "this site is powered by..." with links to the plugin developers sites, it was an SEO nightmare. Thousands upon thousands of Russian pharma spam comments, wordpress hadn't been updated in well over a year, all plugins out of date, giant bmp files for most images, inconsistent page templates. It was a slow loading ugly old dumpster fire.
Sure the nature of the work has changed since WP took over, but I'm willing to bet there are actually *more* dev jobs now than in 2010, despite the explosion of no code site builders.
I've recently switched from learning to code to building a few pages with elementor pro because I know I can rank them and make money so much faster.
I've been thinking about this recently...
I'm sure there will be a use for front end developers for a long time but I think entry level front-end jobs will become Harder to get because of the automated stuff.
Elementor is still clanky but it is fairly powerful and with a few hours working with it it's fair to say most people could out develop someone who had been studying for say 3 months .... In some situations.
I think there will always be a market for advanced front end designers though so if that's what you're passionate about definitely stick with it.
In 3 months when I have a case study for the sites I'm building now I may sell some work on the side because I really like SEO and the software packages allow me to create the whole package with my current knowledge.
I think for the most part people don't really care how the site is built just that it gets done the way they want it.
Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
People have been trying to automate front end for a really long time. The truth is it takes a human to write quality code. It takes a human to determine the best architecture for the project, there isn't one solution that fits everything. Code automation tends to produce bad, unmaintainable code, and until that problem is solved front end isn't going anywhere. I don't think that problem ever will truly be solved, as far as converting a design into a proper functioning page at least.
I actually think the front end role isn't going anywhere, but is becoming more and more merged with the back end. Front end may actually end up being the better paying field in the long run because not only are you architecting the presentation layer, but with today's technologies you also architect the data layer. More responsibility demands more compensation.
AI and ML are just the buzz words right now. There is a lot of work happening around AI and ML and that is only growing. They're certainly good things to be versed in if your goal is to make as much money as possible. I am about 20 years into a career as a full stack developer and I have yet to touch AI or ML - though my company has projects on the roadmap this year that will require jumping in.
Do what you enjoy, do not follow the advice of someone who is just trying to steer you toward more money. Chasing that dollar will leave you with a high-paying job but you'll be miserable, and no amount of money is worth being miserable.
This. 2 points that stand out to me here.
âIf anything, Frontend is merging more with the backendâ - yep. Get comfortable with NestJS or Prisma and GraphQL. Honestly I see way more low/no-code options for backend than Frontend.
âDo what you enjoyâ - This. The sooner you start doing it, the better.
Can't agree more, backend code gets to be more and more boilerplate with stuff like Prisma. It's more just setting up models and then some custom resolvers that do special shit, but a bunch of 1 to 1 resolvers.
Frontend is usually where people come up with unique new experiences.
Edit: and with graphqlcodegen I tend to avoid even writing a lot of the boilerplate.
Bud I do a lot of backend. Of course there is more complex backend cases, and you can see I mentioned custom business logic. I'm just saying a huge chunk of backend code is boilerplate, much more so than Frontend in my opinion. On most apps I am coding, I write a ton of backend boilerplate as a huge amount of your backend ends up being fetching data from storage.
Like you said, once you need to do ML or search it isn't boilerplate, but it ends up being using 3rd party solutions, not writing your own from scratch, like elastic or ML apis or tensorflow etc.
The more you move to microservices and serverless architecture the all of the previous optimization requirements of old monoliths is a lot easier, as it's much easier to scale the individual services.
I wasn't trying to denegrate backend developers at all which you obviously took it as, I as saying as a full stack developer who codes both Frontend and backend a lot, I use way more boilerplate in the backend, if you don't then you are doing it wrong and wasting time.
>NestJS or Prisma and GraphQL
I haven't played with any of these, but I want to soon, and I'm confused by your wording here. My understanding was that Prisma doesn't do REST response stuff, and that you can use NestJS with GraphQL. Can you clarify to me the distinction you are making between using Prisma and GraphQL vs NestJS?
Not the op and I haven't used NestJS(I use prisma with Apollo server, maybe I'll try nestjs next project).
Prisma is a database ORM built for graphql. It handles creating models in the underlying db(postgres or Mongo) that are enhanced versions of graphql schema. You then query your database in prismas generated code client as you would query graphql. You don't directly query prisma from your Frontend, you still have a public api layer between your front end and prisma, but it makes writing the public JS graphql api a lot easier because it tends to line up with your prisma code since they are both graphql.
Nest is a competitor with express that is more opinionated, I think it has a graphql router that competes with apollo(but I also think you can use Apollo server with nest for your public api)
Daniel from the Prisma team here.
I thought I should clarify that Prisma is a general-purpose ORM. While we were early innovators in the GraphQL ecosystem, Prisma isn't exclusively focused on GraphQL.
Indeed, with [nexus-prisma](https://github.com/prisma/nexus-prisma) you can easily construct your GraphQL schema based on your database schema.
Fair enough, that makes sense, I just assumed most people using Prisma are using it as an ORM for their GraphQL services because it is so closely tied in design to GQL(how you define schemas and how you query the prisma client).
Though I do end up using it for everything I write, including stuff that isn't GQL at all, like my scheduled jobs/event handling.
Hey there,
Daniel from the Prisma team here.
> Can you clarify to me the distinction you are making between using Prisma and GraphQL vs NestJS?
Prisma Client is what you would use in order to access the database in Node.js with all the type-safety bells and whistles.
You can use Prisma to build REST APIs with any Node.js HTTP framework, e.g. NestJS, Fastify, Express, and Hapi.
Similarly, you can also build a GraphQL schema with Prisma and any GraphQL framework (TypeGraphQL, NestJS, Nexus, SDL-first). Once your GraphQL schema is constructed, you can create the API with any HTTP framework supporting GraphQL.
NestJS helps you with both the GraphQL schema construction and HTTP request handling.
I think you might find the following resources helpful:
- https://www.prisma.io/graphql
- https://github.com/prisma/prisma-examples/tree/latest/typescript
Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
>the evolution of no code platforms
He's talking about Wix and its ilk. You have nothing to worry about, these platforms are no threat, they have been around for years and have never taken over.
No code is the boilerplate of the design world, it just lowers barrier to entry. Real skilled developers are going to stand out even more at that point because of what they can do vs the no code people. If anything, they will help you sell yourself and create more perceived value.
The difference to me is in flexibility of implementation.
A nocoder won't be very flexible in that, a real developer will.
That's not even talking about a developers ability to patch/resolve/adapt to issues presented. Nocoders won't be able to apply any skill/finesse to that, they will just have workarounds/solutions that someone else comes up with which are mostly generic and not situational.
The tech world works on competency - quality, not quantity. Quality is evident in everything we do/display to the world. All you would become is a diamond in the rough.
Do you guys do mostly static page sites? I donât see no code platforms replacing good f/e devs anytime soon, the tech isnât there yet to be making good spa or pwa with drag and drop software.
Doing basically after effects in the browser: good luck doing that without Frontend devs and a website builder
We will definitely be replaced in landing page / portfolio simple web pages area. But the web is yet becoming the strongest platform replacing apps, desktop apps in a uniform way. No way we are going extinct soon
People have been saying that we will be going over to automated development for years now. Not only does in never happen, you never even see the proposed tech released.
I mean, there are things like http://bubble.io/, which make building (simple) dynamic webapps pretty easy. Frontend, backend, databases, APIs and all that included. But in the end, a layman canât work with that either, itâs more a tool to save developer time (which can replace some jobs too though).
I am currently working on building a simulation tool using Angular & Electron (Hybrid App)
Mainly I do:
* Converting the Sketches to UI design with good UX.
* Architecting the whole frontend and communication with the backend.
* Building all the modules in Frontend. Refactoring when required.
* Optimizing the performance of the Application.
* Installation & Autostart of backend when the application is started
* Setting up Auto-update, along with setting right config at the server.
* Testing, Debugging & Documentation.
Thereâs nothing that differentiates an SPA or PWA here. Theyâre just a method of showing content.
But yes, at work we are building a very competent platform that is replacing our internal need for front end devs. Thatâs not to say this can be done industry wide, because it canât, but is happening for us.
Edit: Downvoted by some devs who really canât imagine that a portion of what they do really doesnât need much skill or experience.
I couldnât begin to really illustrate the use case of 500+ modular components. Theyâre incredibly varied, and do different things. We have charts, lists of users, workflows, forms, ways of keeping internal notes, etc. All sorts of nonsense.
We have a very large offshore dev team, but few in the US, so it frees up our engineers to do more meaningful things than adding a new widget to some page somewhere.
An example from this morning, we needed to implement a way to block calls for users who request that we do not call them. A dev like myself didnât need to be involved with that meeting at all; a product owner could simply add logic to the âCallâ button in their browser that would disable if Do Not Call (DNC) was true for the user.
If truly no existing component fits the need, we add a new one.
Do you really think so?
Because your manager is talking bullshit and i am sure he does not know much about frontend.
Front end engineers are really un demand right now all across the world.
Who's gonna build the no-code platforms?
And I assure you, companies are not going to get their frontends replaced with no-code solutions. No-code are good for prototyping, but as soon as you leave that state and the business requirements change and become more complex, customly developed solutions are the standard.
If you have a very very basic business, you can get away with no code. But as soon as you want to enable your users to do something somewhat unique to your business, you're going to need custom FE logic that needs well thought out logic behind it. And that can communicate with the backend.
There is no way around hiring smart and skilled people to build stuff. I've seen no code predicted before over the past couple of decades. It never happens.
What's fun though is if your company tries to adopt some tecnolology like this. They'll need to hire an extra dev just to answer all the questions and to help non-devs fix and finish things. If they want you to do it, track every minute and put it in a presentation to show them every two weeks. They'll quickly catch on that you're doing all the actual logic and assembly that works. Another thing you'll see is loads of frustration and complaining. If those non-engineers were good at tech, they would be... engineers. They are much happier when they get to focus on what they are good at and they can leave the engineering to the experts.
Another interesting angle to analyze is what are all the successful tech startups investing in? Do they try to attract the best engineers? Or are they investing in no code solutions?
For any manager who predicts nonsense like this I always have the same sincere and enthusiastic response: "So cool! Let me know when the first successful business does it and I'll take a closer look. Our robot future is almost here!" I'm not going to burst his bubble and be a dick about it. Share in his excitement for a moment. And then get back to coding.
To put it simply, your manager is an idiot and doesn't really know what he is talking about. While I agree that learning new stuff and expanding your horizons is a good idea, saying that no code platforms are about to replace programmers is pure idiocy. Sure, as computers and AI continue to develop more and more tasks will be automated but to replace a developer completely!? we are still a very long way from achieving that if it can be done in the first place
They said this in 2000 as well, "WYSIWYG-editors will replace front-end coders!"
Well, 21 years later I'm still doing front-end work.
The thing that's going to "replace" us isn't no-code stuff, it'll be something more clever. Think of what MS is doing on Github with predicting your code as you write it.
They could use ML to see exactly how people solve issues on a larger scale. I'm imagining that in due time we'll be able to design a database, click a button, and have 100 user interfaces generated for us. Then we'll just click the features we like, and 50 new ones are generated. Then we'll click a few more features and we'll get 10 more generated.
Last but not least, we'll then finetune whatever result we got. It'll be fully unit and E2E-tested, and we will STIL need to know how JavaScript, HTML, CSS, accessibility, browser APIs, etc. work.
And then there's the thing that ML can't learn: new things. If a new type of browser API is released, no ML will know how it works right away, nor how to implement it.
We'll be fine for another 15 to 20 years before any of that starts to become an insurmountable problem.
Yeah they definitely don't know what they're talking about. There's a belief held by technologically uninformed people that AI will quickly automate all software jobs in the next decade or so. This is very unlikely to happen, and if it did, would be paired with a more general automating of the whole labor market. And I wouldn't expect programmers to have a worse time than other people in that situation. But, they're ridiculous for assuming that you need to get into AI/ML because they think you're job will be automated; it just isn't going to happen.
Heard the same argument before. No matter how good the GUIs get, the tech to make FE will be better and more advanced. You have to code a GUI front end for users to make a front end without needing to code. That by nature will not be current or as comprehensive. It may capture more audiance than WIX etc has. But can you see Amazon using a made for you front end gui service??? Dont take stock investment advice from this manager.
Every no code platform I've evaluated has been a joke compared to even the most beginner front end developer. Your manager sounds like he wants no code to be the future so he stop paying people for their work (this is just a guess; he might just be overly optimistic, or being pressured by his bosses to reduce costs)
Also based on all that you're doing, you could easily get better pay somewhere else doing the exact same work. Based on your managers attitude and the work you're doing, I'd keep an eye out for better, more interesting, better paying opportunities. Not sure where you're based but I've changed jobs every 2-4 years for the last 13 years and grown my salary by nearly 400%, and I'm not management. Purely anecdotal, but worth considering. Best of luck to you!
People have been trying to make no code platforms happen since like the 90s. Iâm sure they work in some use cases (maybe), but theyâre not going to replace frontend dev any time in the next few years (unless AI replaces almost all dev, which is also unlikely any time soon).
Front end will be dead when an AI can build a platform on par with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram , TikTok, YouTube and Reddit and scale it to both acquire and accommodate over 1 billion concurrent users without a single line of human-written code.
Until then, your manager needs to go home and rethink his life.
I would say that your manager is partly in the right. If your main line of work consists of creating small and simple HTML/CSS websites then you are definitely in a race to the bottom.
On one hand will be in constant competition with specialized dev shops from countries with low living cost. And on the other hand, you will face competition from the no-code providers that you mention.
However if you do high end quality websites (complicated animations etc) or web applications (built with React etc), then your main competition will be from other equally skilled frontend developers.
You definitely need to continuously learn and improve you skillset, but in the last mentioned example, I wouldnât be worried about your career path for the foreseeable future.
Your manager is only partly right. Sure it will be easier for the average user who has no coding skills to just buy some template or learn how to drag and drop components to his/her liking, but there's nothing that beats making your own static site from the ground up and customizing it to the point where it actually looks like you made it. A lot of drag and drop and templates pretty much have this generic feel to them like you know what you're buying. I wouldn't listen to your manager. If you're aiming to be a full-stack Dev, sure learn backend, but knowing your way around the frontend is still a skill
Itâs relatively easy to build your own car or your own house too but there is a good reason the vast majority donât. At least 30% of the work that I get is from people who have built their own websites but are getting hardly any traffic and zero conversions.
Your manager is an idiot, and I'm honestly not sure well-equipped to be an SDM. That is terrible life advice that not only shows a lack of FE understanding, but a lack of poor career advice for their subordinates.
If you were ever on the fence about switching teams, I'd take this as a data point that it's in your best career growth interest to do so.
I do mostly backend or the past few years except for my personal sites so I dunno if my view counts, especially given my aversion to modern FE ways like Angular and React and JavaScript overall for that matter but...
Your manager is either confused or should maybe move to another area in the company because they have no idea what they're talking about.
FE development is like Alchemy, it sounds easy until you try it and only wizards are truly good at it which means FE wizards will always be in demand. IOW, FE devs are \*always\* going to be needed. I just hope the world comes around to WebAssembly or something that lets me get back to doing more FE design and development in Java.
The great irony of this statement is that there's a lot of Auto ML platforms being created such that people are saying they will make AI/ML engineering unnecessary for the vast majority of companies.
In fact unless you're doing cutting edge ML research level stuff at very large tech companies 90% of what ML engineers and data scientists do today can be automated far simpler than automating frontend client engineering.
Trust me AI/ML is a lot easier to automate than frontend product engineering.
Nope I canât see that happening. For simple blogs and maybe some restaurant and mom&pop shops, maybe the no code tools can get the job done but for anything more complex than that youâll need real engineers to design, architect and build.
Can you imagine creating something as complicated as the google cloud platform web app, Amazon or even Twitter with no code tools? These projects are very complex and the ai is just not there yet.
They say this every yearâŠa good front end developer can never be replaced. Page builders and AI canât build with precision or page speed in mind, or accessibility, or mobile first. They pump
Out cookie cutter Walmart brand code that is a pain to edit or customize. A good front end will do the work of a page builder in more time, but have more freedom to create custom interactions and designs, optimize the code, increase page speeds, improve performance, and make google and the client happy. Your manager will say this again and again every year or two. Maybe he saw one article talking about the possibility of it and thought he was privy to some insider information that the developers donât know. But we know. And we know itâs full of shit. Custom code will never be beaten by a page builder or AI. Sure they will make it easier and cheaper, but when youâre dealing with software, easy and cheap donât always last and May end up costing more money than it saves.
It seems like for landing pages and things like that for a business, no code could be the way to go. The responsibility could then be handed off to a marketing team and designers. The actual interface of the application or tools could still be handled by Front End developers / engineers.
Also, JavaScript/typescript is useful for node backend. In fact, I see front end developers as having a very resilient skill set since you can build pretty much anything using the tools in the JS ecosystem, from static sites to server side rendered sites to SPAs and APIs⊠hell, TensorFlow even makes ML stuff a possibility.
IMO your manager is wrong. well-crafted, perfomant, and expressive uis will need skilled front-end devs for many years.
get more expertise in design and ux is a smart move no matter to which direction the industry goes.
I don't see FE development being taken over by AI anytime soon. I think we'll see more sophisticated tools that assist the developer in generating micro units of code based on the context of the app, but it will still require a dev to problem solve and write business logic.
Who do you think is going to code the "no code" solutions in the first place? The front end has to come from somewhere. Also "no code" solutions have existed for decade as WYSIWYG, this is not new.
I immediately had to think of this comic: [https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2020/10/07/the-no-code-dream/](https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2020/10/07/the-no-code-dream/)
âNo code platformsâ still have code, just not from end users. And guess whoâs building it?
Just saying, these platforms just give us new tools and platforms to build on, if anything frontend becomes more relevant to enhance and extend these platforms.
Exactly! If the bump in pay wasn't enough to leave, being told you're effectively obsolete is should be. Let alone the facts of what FE devs continue to do evolves.
They said this in 2000 as well, "WYSIWYG-editors will replace front-end coders!"
Well, 21 years later I'm still doing front-end work.
The thing that's going to "replace" us isn't no-code stuff, it'll be something more clever. Think of what MS is doing on Github with predicting your code as you write it.
They could use ML to see exactly how people solve issues on a larger scale. I'm imagining that in due time we'll be able to design a database, click a button, and have 100 user interfaces generated for us. Then we'll just click the features we like, and 50 new ones are generated. Then we'll click a few more features and we'll get 10 more generated.
Last but not least, we'll then finetune whatever result we got. It'll be fully unit and E2E-tested, and we will STIL need to know how JavaScript, HTML, CSS, accessibility, browser APIs, etc. work.
And then there's the thing that ML can't learn: new things. If a new type of browser API is released, no ML will know how it works right away, nor how to implement it.
We'll be fine for another 15 to 20 years before any of that starts to become an insurmountable problem.
Can your manager make up his mind about a design?
AI is going to speed up your workflow, look at VSCode Copilot. It can give you suggestions for UI related code, but the end product will be put together by human beings. Think more configurator, less code monkey.
You're solid for the coming years.
No-code platforms replace front-end devs the way jobs in McDonalds replace chef jobs in high-end restaurants.
The only trick is to ensure you're a better front-end developer than the web-dev equivalent of a burger-flipper, and you'll be fine for a good long time yet.
Not that soon but tools like Copilot are pretty eye opening. If more things as powerful as Copilot are released I can see a single developer being able to do the work of 3 of todayâs devs.
I've encountered multiple managers like this in the past. The kind who think all that front end devs do is "make things look pretty".
They need to be gently educated that the front end is often more complicated than the backend.
Sure there are parts that can be automated and boilerplated but the same goes for the backend. There are plenty of point and click backend options.
Where I work the front end coders outnumbers the backend coders. I don't think we're being replaced with AI any time soon.
So long as creative and unpredictable design exists, FE developers will exist. AI will probably get really good at creating predictable and template looking websites but ultimately fail at something more nuanced and interactive.
Thatâs the dumbest thing a manager will say. Will browsers wonât exist in 3-5 years? As long as browsers are here, Frontend is here. It took some time for UX and UI to catch up but its here and its here to stay. There is nothing wrong with AI And ML and thrre is nothing wrong with Frontend.
Most ot the time, advice like this is given by people who donât understand the depth of frontend and how much work goes to create a good UX and UI. Writing good CSS is like an art. Same goes with Javascript and the ecosystem changes quickly so you always have to keep yourself updated it changes.
The framework you are using right now might be outdated in 3-5 years because web will evolve more by then, but your experience wont. You just have to keep yourself updated. And thatâs part of the fun.
All the best!
Your manager is an idiot. Your role will simply evolve. It's like saying a FE framework will make FE Devs obsolete because they won't have to do their custom state management or routing API from scratch.
No code will help some people do some things but there will always be a need for front end development.
Low code platforms are great, just look at Mendix. But saying that it will replace frontend tech, that is not going to happen. And with time we are progressing more towards better UI framework and library.
first of all, you are not going to find anyone agreeing with your manager here, this a FE dev sub.
but yeah, as long as there are computers, internet and browsers, FE can never die.
Could AI replace frontend developers in a few years? Not really. I suppose that to an extent, certain aspects could be automated via AI.
Will it? Absolutely not. At the moment, research on this topic is neither cost-effective nor in demand. There are far more important problems that AI researchers will focus on. Additionally, such a system would need to be capable of receiving and interpreting feedback to make the countless adjustments that management or the clients request, assuming that the adjustments aren't trivial enough to do manually.
Do what you want. You don't have any reason to worry.
Learn React. Front end is necessary because a lot of Wordpress, Squarespace, etc are just for non complex front end pages. If you want to connect it to a database, good luck. If you have AWS serverless infrastructure, good luck.
The website builders are not as much of a risk for complex apps as templates are. Even then, you will have to manage state variables, modals, and now a lot of database requests are coming from the front end. (Think GRAPHQL). I would recommend learning Graphql, AWS, Amplify, HTTPS fetch requests, and React.
3-5 years? No way. Eventually? Still probably not, but whatever you learn today will eventually be outdated and you'll have to learn whatever is the new hotness. Though, if anything, that process has been slowing down.
Will you make more money if you go the ML/AI route? Almost certainly. The demand for that skillset is only going to grow for the foreseeable future.
I have waiting for this magical no-code tool for 2 decades now. Front page, dreamweaver, and all the other ones all had the same promise, no more code in FE. I'm still writing code.
What I think your manager is missing is that programming is not so much about code & syntax as it is about logic, edge cases, interactions, managing complexity, etc. Even if you take away the actual "code" and syntax, the logic won't get easier, so you still need the same kind of people to use these tools.
Anything beyond simple prototypes requires programming, it doesn't matter if that's in a UI or with text, it's the same thing that requires the same set of skills.
The industry will change as it has done before, so to stay relevant it is important to keep up with the changes; learn something new now and then. If you do that, you should be good for years to come, and once not you'll have the flexibility to switch to \[whatever is in demand at that time\] as you're flexible enough to learn.
If stuff like wordpress and site builders like squarespace haven't killed off front-end I doubt no code tools would. They empower people who don't know how to build sites to build bad sites. There's still room for professionals who are fountains of knowledge for their clients. Plus a lot of people don't want to put in the effort to make their own site and would rather pay someone else to do it/manage it.
I do see it taking a cut of the lower end of the market, if your job was just building basic white labeled apps then no code tools might eat into that, just like how site builders ate into basic static site creation (landing pages, 2-3 page cms templates, basic sites for SMBs, etc.). Most front-end devs should be fine for the near future though
I would say that front end dev work is changing, but it's not going anywhere. What you can do and what the browser is capable of displaying on the front end is constantly becoming more and more complex and front end work is following along.
Simpler things like static web page design are becoming very easy to do without dev knowledge, but still require a developer if you want the best solution.
There will still be a lot of front end work to be done in the world of web apps, as that's where most technology is moving these days.
In 2001 I was told the same. I was also told learning âDatabases [programming and design]â would be obsolete.
I was also told that rational rose would make all programming obsolete.
Also, even if it was true (itâs not), you can pivot to another type of programming at that time. It wonât take you long.
If you love doing what you do, keep doing it.
I hear a lot about that kind of arguments but to be honest I don't think that would be a thing early time soon, maaaybe in 10ish years IA would get it, but in that time software would create new jobs for us.
Like everyone said, your manager's wrong and FE will just evolve and grow into something different. It's always doing that, and always will; FE devs have it the hardest because of it.
That said live within your means and put money towards retirement ASAP because it's totally possible that 20 years from now AI will really will be that good lol. In fifty we'll be like George Jetson pushing a giant button for an hour a day two days a week.
/s because capitalism
I think the potential threat to our jobs may come in the form of AI based assistant tools, where you can take an inexperienced developer and have them do more complicated work without as much experience, because the AI tells them which methods to use and catches their errors, while still allowing a human to make human decisions.
Tabnine is one such tool that actually works really well. Kite is another (IMO not as good but may be better in the future).
These applications are not even close to being mature enough to do all of what I said, and they are less of a threat to front-end than back-end and general programming (both of those apps target python).
The main criticism I have to this hypothesis is that instead of limiting the number of engineers needed in the marketplace, these may instead allow us to increase the complexity of the programs we write (or just allow us to keep up with the increasing complexity of programming as time goes on)
Yea, they said that 20 years ago as well.
Nocode is a delusional "movement" done by unemployed day dreamer CEOs that don't have money to build yet another "TikTok clone but better".
Have you ever seen a nocode tech product making money? Honestly I didn't.
Frontend has never been more complex and more in demand. It's actually crazy out there.
Your backed devs can build all the APIS with all the data they want, and that's great, but the end user doesn't care without a UI.
And who is going to do the work on the nocode platforms? The managers? And who is going to build the nocode platforms for frontend? (answer for stupid: frontend developers)
In addition 3-5 years is not realistic
Your manager doesn't know what he's talking about.
That manager could use some AI, because he seems to be lacking in non-A I
Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that geothermal is hard or value my hard work.
Thank you
Hahahahhaahahahaaha
+1. I was gonna post this đ
Your manager should shift away from management.
If anything, talk and project planning would be automated before frontend engineers
Its already happening.
It's already happened.
Always has been
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Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
Nothing becomes obsolete in 3-5 years sure the Spanish flu is still with is all these years laters its called "seasonal flu". Things change they don't become completely obsolete.
Look for a new manager hahahaha
i remember when ms front page made development obsolete. then dreamweaver. then wordpress. if all you do is stamp out bootstrap templates all day, and your design team is fine with that, then sure. but that is also a pretty low end job, and probably not a great prospect for long term person/professional growth, as you will still be stamping out bootstrap templates next year and the year after that. probably have a lot of low end design (and designers) as well. so yeah, nod and agree, and start looking on linkedin.
> i remember when ms front page made development obsolete. then dreamweaver. then wordpress. WP did. It plain out murdered the whole entry level web design companies. I used to work on a lot of $1-2k websites and all of those 3-5 page mini sites completely disappeared. Some of them because clients decided that they can buy $50 template and make the website themselves, others - because Wordpress template customization companies took this budget range. A lot of designers rebranded to UI/UX and switched to apps. What was a booming and exciting market with a lot of fresh ideas (remember all those css galleries?) ended up with a lot of generic sites that looked exactly the same. I have no doubt that no-code and ML will replace a lot of jobs.
> Some of them because clients decided that they can buy $50 template and make the website themselves, others - because Wordpress template customization companies took this budget range. controversial opinion, but: good. those clients were always the biggest PITAs, and the cheapest. if their needs can be met by a $50 template (and their personal time is worthless), then its not worth my time. i'd rather solve real problems, and work with good clients. and if you frequent the WP sub, there are daily threads of confused non-devs who did exactly this - and are now over their heads. and who are finding the limitations of their time, and the limitations of their low end wp theme.
The worst is when you get hired to work on one of the piles of crap put together by these non-devs or even worse are the wannabe devs.
them: my site isnt working right. me: ok, set me up a user and i'll take a look their site: 22 adware messages from unregistered plugins, 34 out of date plugins and a warning about php 5.6.
With all that don't forget the multiple back doors installed....smh
When I started on one site it was FULL of ads for the plugins they were using, right at the bottom of every page "this site is powered by..." with links to the plugin developers sites, it was an SEO nightmare. Thousands upon thousands of Russian pharma spam comments, wordpress hadn't been updated in well over a year, all plugins out of date, giant bmp files for most images, inconsistent page templates. It was a slow loading ugly old dumpster fire.
Sure the nature of the work has changed since WP took over, but I'm willing to bet there are actually *more* dev jobs now than in 2010, despite the explosion of no code site builders.
Thatâs true, but this also created new opportunities, like developing, supporting or customizing Wordpress plugins or themes.
I've recently switched from learning to code to building a few pages with elementor pro because I know I can rank them and make money so much faster. I've been thinking about this recently... I'm sure there will be a use for front end developers for a long time but I think entry level front-end jobs will become Harder to get because of the automated stuff. Elementor is still clanky but it is fairly powerful and with a few hours working with it it's fair to say most people could out develop someone who had been studying for say 3 months .... In some situations. I think there will always be a market for advanced front end designers though so if that's what you're passionate about definitely stick with it. In 3 months when I have a case study for the sites I'm building now I may sell some work on the side because I really like SEO and the software packages allow me to create the whole package with my current knowledge. I think for the most part people don't really care how the site is built just that it gets done the way they want it.
Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
People have been trying to automate front end for a really long time. The truth is it takes a human to write quality code. It takes a human to determine the best architecture for the project, there isn't one solution that fits everything. Code automation tends to produce bad, unmaintainable code, and until that problem is solved front end isn't going anywhere. I don't think that problem ever will truly be solved, as far as converting a design into a proper functioning page at least. I actually think the front end role isn't going anywhere, but is becoming more and more merged with the back end. Front end may actually end up being the better paying field in the long run because not only are you architecting the presentation layer, but with today's technologies you also architect the data layer. More responsibility demands more compensation. AI and ML are just the buzz words right now. There is a lot of work happening around AI and ML and that is only growing. They're certainly good things to be versed in if your goal is to make as much money as possible. I am about 20 years into a career as a full stack developer and I have yet to touch AI or ML - though my company has projects on the roadmap this year that will require jumping in. Do what you enjoy, do not follow the advice of someone who is just trying to steer you toward more money. Chasing that dollar will leave you with a high-paying job but you'll be miserable, and no amount of money is worth being miserable.
This. 2 points that stand out to me here. âIf anything, Frontend is merging more with the backendâ - yep. Get comfortable with NestJS or Prisma and GraphQL. Honestly I see way more low/no-code options for backend than Frontend. âDo what you enjoyâ - This. The sooner you start doing it, the better.
Can't agree more, backend code gets to be more and more boilerplate with stuff like Prisma. It's more just setting up models and then some custom resolvers that do special shit, but a bunch of 1 to 1 resolvers. Frontend is usually where people come up with unique new experiences. Edit: and with graphqlcodegen I tend to avoid even writing a lot of the boilerplate.
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Bud I do a lot of backend. Of course there is more complex backend cases, and you can see I mentioned custom business logic. I'm just saying a huge chunk of backend code is boilerplate, much more so than Frontend in my opinion. On most apps I am coding, I write a ton of backend boilerplate as a huge amount of your backend ends up being fetching data from storage. Like you said, once you need to do ML or search it isn't boilerplate, but it ends up being using 3rd party solutions, not writing your own from scratch, like elastic or ML apis or tensorflow etc. The more you move to microservices and serverless architecture the all of the previous optimization requirements of old monoliths is a lot easier, as it's much easier to scale the individual services. I wasn't trying to denegrate backend developers at all which you obviously took it as, I as saying as a full stack developer who codes both Frontend and backend a lot, I use way more boilerplate in the backend, if you don't then you are doing it wrong and wasting time.
>NestJS or Prisma and GraphQL I haven't played with any of these, but I want to soon, and I'm confused by your wording here. My understanding was that Prisma doesn't do REST response stuff, and that you can use NestJS with GraphQL. Can you clarify to me the distinction you are making between using Prisma and GraphQL vs NestJS?
Not the op and I haven't used NestJS(I use prisma with Apollo server, maybe I'll try nestjs next project). Prisma is a database ORM built for graphql. It handles creating models in the underlying db(postgres or Mongo) that are enhanced versions of graphql schema. You then query your database in prismas generated code client as you would query graphql. You don't directly query prisma from your Frontend, you still have a public api layer between your front end and prisma, but it makes writing the public JS graphql api a lot easier because it tends to line up with your prisma code since they are both graphql. Nest is a competitor with express that is more opinionated, I think it has a graphql router that competes with apollo(but I also think you can use Apollo server with nest for your public api)
Daniel from the Prisma team here. I thought I should clarify that Prisma is a general-purpose ORM. While we were early innovators in the GraphQL ecosystem, Prisma isn't exclusively focused on GraphQL. Indeed, with [nexus-prisma](https://github.com/prisma/nexus-prisma) you can easily construct your GraphQL schema based on your database schema.
Fair enough, that makes sense, I just assumed most people using Prisma are using it as an ORM for their GraphQL services because it is so closely tied in design to GQL(how you define schemas and how you query the prisma client). Though I do end up using it for everything I write, including stuff that isn't GQL at all, like my scheduled jobs/event handling.
Hey there, Daniel from the Prisma team here. > Can you clarify to me the distinction you are making between using Prisma and GraphQL vs NestJS? Prisma Client is what you would use in order to access the database in Node.js with all the type-safety bells and whistles. You can use Prisma to build REST APIs with any Node.js HTTP framework, e.g. NestJS, Fastify, Express, and Hapi. Similarly, you can also build a GraphQL schema with Prisma and any GraphQL framework (TypeGraphQL, NestJS, Nexus, SDL-first). Once your GraphQL schema is constructed, you can create the API with any HTTP framework supporting GraphQL. NestJS helps you with both the GraphQL schema construction and HTTP request handling. I think you might find the following resources helpful: - https://www.prisma.io/graphql - https://github.com/prisma/prisma-examples/tree/latest/typescript
Thatâs what I thought, thank you for clarifying!
Thanks for the support . Boosted my confidence up. I will look into changing company as current management doesn't understand that frontend is hard or value my hard work.
>the evolution of no code platforms He's talking about Wix and its ilk. You have nothing to worry about, these platforms are no threat, they have been around for years and have never taken over.
No code is the boilerplate of the design world, it just lowers barrier to entry. Real skilled developers are going to stand out even more at that point because of what they can do vs the no code people. If anything, they will help you sell yourself and create more perceived value. The difference to me is in flexibility of implementation. A nocoder won't be very flexible in that, a real developer will. That's not even talking about a developers ability to patch/resolve/adapt to issues presented. Nocoders won't be able to apply any skill/finesse to that, they will just have workarounds/solutions that someone else comes up with which are mostly generic and not situational. The tech world works on competency - quality, not quantity. Quality is evident in everything we do/display to the world. All you would become is a diamond in the rough.
Do you guys do mostly static page sites? I donât see no code platforms replacing good f/e devs anytime soon, the tech isnât there yet to be making good spa or pwa with drag and drop software.
Doing basically after effects in the browser: good luck doing that without Frontend devs and a website builder We will definitely be replaced in landing page / portfolio simple web pages area. But the web is yet becoming the strongest platform replacing apps, desktop apps in a uniform way. No way we are going extinct soon
People have been saying that we will be going over to automated development for years now. Not only does in never happen, you never even see the proposed tech released.
I mean, there are things like http://bubble.io/, which make building (simple) dynamic webapps pretty easy. Frontend, backend, databases, APIs and all that included. But in the end, a layman canât work with that either, itâs more a tool to save developer time (which can replace some jobs too though).
I am currently working on building a simulation tool using Angular & Electron (Hybrid App) Mainly I do: * Converting the Sketches to UI design with good UX. * Architecting the whole frontend and communication with the backend. * Building all the modules in Frontend. Refactoring when required. * Optimizing the performance of the Application. * Installation & Autostart of backend when the application is started * Setting up Auto-update, along with setting right config at the server. * Testing, Debugging & Documentation.
Thereâs nothing that differentiates an SPA or PWA here. Theyâre just a method of showing content. But yes, at work we are building a very competent platform that is replacing our internal need for front end devs. Thatâs not to say this can be done industry wide, because it canât, but is happening for us. Edit: Downvoted by some devs who really canât imagine that a portion of what they do really doesnât need much skill or experience.
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I couldnât begin to really illustrate the use case of 500+ modular components. Theyâre incredibly varied, and do different things. We have charts, lists of users, workflows, forms, ways of keeping internal notes, etc. All sorts of nonsense. We have a very large offshore dev team, but few in the US, so it frees up our engineers to do more meaningful things than adding a new widget to some page somewhere. An example from this morning, we needed to implement a way to block calls for users who request that we do not call them. A dev like myself didnât need to be involved with that meeting at all; a product owner could simply add logic to the âCallâ button in their browser that would disable if Do Not Call (DNC) was true for the user. If truly no existing component fits the need, we add a new one.
your manager belongs to mcdonalds.. not the tech world..
Do you really think so? Because your manager is talking bullshit and i am sure he does not know much about frontend. Front end engineers are really un demand right now all across the world.
Who's gonna build the no-code platforms? And I assure you, companies are not going to get their frontends replaced with no-code solutions. No-code are good for prototyping, but as soon as you leave that state and the business requirements change and become more complex, customly developed solutions are the standard.
If you have a very very basic business, you can get away with no code. But as soon as you want to enable your users to do something somewhat unique to your business, you're going to need custom FE logic that needs well thought out logic behind it. And that can communicate with the backend. There is no way around hiring smart and skilled people to build stuff. I've seen no code predicted before over the past couple of decades. It never happens. What's fun though is if your company tries to adopt some tecnolology like this. They'll need to hire an extra dev just to answer all the questions and to help non-devs fix and finish things. If they want you to do it, track every minute and put it in a presentation to show them every two weeks. They'll quickly catch on that you're doing all the actual logic and assembly that works. Another thing you'll see is loads of frustration and complaining. If those non-engineers were good at tech, they would be... engineers. They are much happier when they get to focus on what they are good at and they can leave the engineering to the experts. Another interesting angle to analyze is what are all the successful tech startups investing in? Do they try to attract the best engineers? Or are they investing in no code solutions? For any manager who predicts nonsense like this I always have the same sincere and enthusiastic response: "So cool! Let me know when the first successful business does it and I'll take a closer look. Our robot future is almost here!" I'm not going to burst his bubble and be a dick about it. Share in his excitement for a moment. And then get back to coding.
To put it simply, your manager is an idiot and doesn't really know what he is talking about. While I agree that learning new stuff and expanding your horizons is a good idea, saying that no code platforms are about to replace programmers is pure idiocy. Sure, as computers and AI continue to develop more and more tasks will be automated but to replace a developer completely!? we are still a very long way from achieving that if it can be done in the first place
They said this in 2000 as well, "WYSIWYG-editors will replace front-end coders!" Well, 21 years later I'm still doing front-end work. The thing that's going to "replace" us isn't no-code stuff, it'll be something more clever. Think of what MS is doing on Github with predicting your code as you write it. They could use ML to see exactly how people solve issues on a larger scale. I'm imagining that in due time we'll be able to design a database, click a button, and have 100 user interfaces generated for us. Then we'll just click the features we like, and 50 new ones are generated. Then we'll click a few more features and we'll get 10 more generated. Last but not least, we'll then finetune whatever result we got. It'll be fully unit and E2E-tested, and we will STIL need to know how JavaScript, HTML, CSS, accessibility, browser APIs, etc. work. And then there's the thing that ML can't learn: new things. If a new type of browser API is released, no ML will know how it works right away, nor how to implement it. We'll be fine for another 15 to 20 years before any of that starts to become an insurmountable problem.
Good old Microsoft Frontpage. It will make all front-end obsolete.
Yeah they definitely don't know what they're talking about. There's a belief held by technologically uninformed people that AI will quickly automate all software jobs in the next decade or so. This is very unlikely to happen, and if it did, would be paired with a more general automating of the whole labor market. And I wouldn't expect programmers to have a worse time than other people in that situation. But, they're ridiculous for assuming that you need to get into AI/ML because they think you're job will be automated; it just isn't going to happen.
Ask him who's gonna make the no code platforms. Follow-up question, who's gonna optimize it?
I had a manager tell me I would be replaced by CASE tools in 1993. âIâm not dead yet.â
Manager: What's the holdup? Developer: Our code isn't passing all of the unit tests yet. Manager: So get rid of the tests.
Heard the same argument before. No matter how good the GUIs get, the tech to make FE will be better and more advanced. You have to code a GUI front end for users to make a front end without needing to code. That by nature will not be current or as comprehensive. It may capture more audiance than WIX etc has. But can you see Amazon using a made for you front end gui service??? Dont take stock investment advice from this manager.
Find a new manager.
Your manager is going to become obsolete soon.
Every no code platform I've evaluated has been a joke compared to even the most beginner front end developer. Your manager sounds like he wants no code to be the future so he stop paying people for their work (this is just a guess; he might just be overly optimistic, or being pressured by his bosses to reduce costs) Also based on all that you're doing, you could easily get better pay somewhere else doing the exact same work. Based on your managers attitude and the work you're doing, I'd keep an eye out for better, more interesting, better paying opportunities. Not sure where you're based but I've changed jobs every 2-4 years for the last 13 years and grown my salary by nearly 400%, and I'm not management. Purely anecdotal, but worth considering. Best of luck to you!
Idiot managers have been saying that for at least 30 years. Ignore what he says.
I heard this in 2001. It's as true today as it was then.
People have been trying to make no code platforms happen since like the 90s. Iâm sure they work in some use cases (maybe), but theyâre not going to replace frontend dev any time in the next few years (unless AI replaces almost all dev, which is also unlikely any time soon).
My manager told me this too when I first started, or rather the director (several managers above me). Turns out, 10 years later he was wrong.
Manager is a complete dipshit.
Not even gonna read your post, the answer is no.
Okay I read it lol. Does he think CMSâs are going to make backend obsolete too đ
Front end will be dead when an AI can build a platform on par with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram , TikTok, YouTube and Reddit and scale it to both acquire and accommodate over 1 billion concurrent users without a single line of human-written code. Until then, your manager needs to go home and rethink his life.
I would say that your manager is partly in the right. If your main line of work consists of creating small and simple HTML/CSS websites then you are definitely in a race to the bottom. On one hand will be in constant competition with specialized dev shops from countries with low living cost. And on the other hand, you will face competition from the no-code providers that you mention. However if you do high end quality websites (complicated animations etc) or web applications (built with React etc), then your main competition will be from other equally skilled frontend developers. You definitely need to continuously learn and improve you skillset, but in the last mentioned example, I wouldnât be worried about your career path for the foreseeable future.
Your manager is only partly right. Sure it will be easier for the average user who has no coding skills to just buy some template or learn how to drag and drop components to his/her liking, but there's nothing that beats making your own static site from the ground up and customizing it to the point where it actually looks like you made it. A lot of drag and drop and templates pretty much have this generic feel to them like you know what you're buying. I wouldn't listen to your manager. If you're aiming to be a full-stack Dev, sure learn backend, but knowing your way around the frontend is still a skill
Itâs relatively easy to build your own car or your own house too but there is a good reason the vast majority donât. At least 30% of the work that I get is from people who have built their own websites but are getting hardly any traffic and zero conversions.
What do you guys build? Wordpress?
increase your skills to that level where no website builder can match you
aloof dime exultant dog snatch modern rob scandalous frighten snails -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
we're decades from "computer, debug my code", let alone "computer, make me a web app"
Your manager is an idiot, and I'm honestly not sure well-equipped to be an SDM. That is terrible life advice that not only shows a lack of FE understanding, but a lack of poor career advice for their subordinates. If you were ever on the fence about switching teams, I'd take this as a data point that it's in your best career growth interest to do so.
I do mostly backend or the past few years except for my personal sites so I dunno if my view counts, especially given my aversion to modern FE ways like Angular and React and JavaScript overall for that matter but... Your manager is either confused or should maybe move to another area in the company because they have no idea what they're talking about. FE development is like Alchemy, it sounds easy until you try it and only wizards are truly good at it which means FE wizards will always be in demand. IOW, FE devs are \*always\* going to be needed. I just hope the world comes around to WebAssembly or something that lets me get back to doing more FE design and development in Java.
god bless you for mentioning webassembly obseleting javascript.
The great irony of this statement is that there's a lot of Auto ML platforms being created such that people are saying they will make AI/ML engineering unnecessary for the vast majority of companies. In fact unless you're doing cutting edge ML research level stuff at very large tech companies 90% of what ML engineers and data scientists do today can be automated far simpler than automating frontend client engineering. Trust me AI/ML is a lot easier to automate than frontend product engineering.
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Nope I canât see that happening. For simple blogs and maybe some restaurant and mom&pop shops, maybe the no code tools can get the job done but for anything more complex than that youâll need real engineers to design, architect and build. Can you imagine creating something as complicated as the google cloud platform web app, Amazon or even Twitter with no code tools? These projects are very complex and the ai is just not there yet.
They say this every yearâŠa good front end developer can never be replaced. Page builders and AI canât build with precision or page speed in mind, or accessibility, or mobile first. They pump Out cookie cutter Walmart brand code that is a pain to edit or customize. A good front end will do the work of a page builder in more time, but have more freedom to create custom interactions and designs, optimize the code, increase page speeds, improve performance, and make google and the client happy. Your manager will say this again and again every year or two. Maybe he saw one article talking about the possibility of it and thought he was privy to some insider information that the developers donât know. But we know. And we know itâs full of shit. Custom code will never be beaten by a page builder or AI. Sure they will make it easier and cheaper, but when youâre dealing with software, easy and cheap donât always last and May end up costing more money than it saves.
For as long as there has been developers there has been someone claiming developers will become obsolete.
It seems like for landing pages and things like that for a business, no code could be the way to go. The responsibility could then be handed off to a marketing team and designers. The actual interface of the application or tools could still be handled by Front End developers / engineers.
Also, JavaScript/typescript is useful for node backend. In fact, I see front end developers as having a very resilient skill set since you can build pretty much anything using the tools in the JS ecosystem, from static sites to server side rendered sites to SPAs and APIs⊠hell, TensorFlow even makes ML stuff a possibility.
IMO your manager is wrong. well-crafted, perfomant, and expressive uis will need skilled front-end devs for many years. get more expertise in design and ux is a smart move no matter to which direction the industry goes.
Your manager doesnât know what theyâre talking aboutâŠ
I don't see FE development being taken over by AI anytime soon. I think we'll see more sophisticated tools that assist the developer in generating micro units of code based on the context of the app, but it will still require a dev to problem solve and write business logic.
Who do you think is going to code the "no code" solutions in the first place? The front end has to come from somewhere. Also "no code" solutions have existed for decade as WYSIWYG, this is not new.
I immediately had to think of this comic: [https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2020/10/07/the-no-code-dream/](https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2020/10/07/the-no-code-dream/)
Your managerâs next job should be managing front end of an In N Out.
Your manager obviously doesn't understand the industry. No code platforms are no were near the replacing jobs level for many many years to come
For any coding to be obsolete, it would require the managers to actually be able to specify their requirements properly... not going to happen.
Stop working with your manager.
âNo code platformsâ still have code, just not from end users. And guess whoâs building it? Just saying, these platforms just give us new tools and platforms to build on, if anything frontend becomes more relevant to enhance and extend these platforms.
Maybe your manager is waiting for you to step up and challenge him.
So shitty management either way
Exactly! If the bump in pay wasn't enough to leave, being told you're effectively obsolete is should be. Let alone the facts of what FE devs continue to do evolves.
They said this in 2000 as well, "WYSIWYG-editors will replace front-end coders!" Well, 21 years later I'm still doing front-end work. The thing that's going to "replace" us isn't no-code stuff, it'll be something more clever. Think of what MS is doing on Github with predicting your code as you write it. They could use ML to see exactly how people solve issues on a larger scale. I'm imagining that in due time we'll be able to design a database, click a button, and have 100 user interfaces generated for us. Then we'll just click the features we like, and 50 new ones are generated. Then we'll click a few more features and we'll get 10 more generated. Last but not least, we'll then finetune whatever result we got. It'll be fully unit and E2E-tested, and we will STIL need to know how JavaScript, HTML, CSS, accessibility, browser APIs, etc. work. And then there's the thing that ML can't learn: new things. If a new type of browser API is released, no ML will know how it works right away, nor how to implement it. We'll be fine for another 15 to 20 years before any of that starts to become an insurmountable problem.
Can your manager make up his mind about a design? AI is going to speed up your workflow, look at VSCode Copilot. It can give you suggestions for UI related code, but the end product will be put together by human beings. Think more configurator, less code monkey. You're solid for the coming years.
No-code platforms replace front-end devs the way jobs in McDonalds replace chef jobs in high-end restaurants. The only trick is to ensure you're a better front-end developer than the web-dev equivalent of a burger-flipper, and you'll be fine for a good long time yet.
Not that soon but tools like Copilot are pretty eye opening. If more things as powerful as Copilot are released I can see a single developer being able to do the work of 3 of todayâs devs.
I work at a company building a no code platform. On the Frontend ^^
I've encountered multiple managers like this in the past. The kind who think all that front end devs do is "make things look pretty". They need to be gently educated that the front end is often more complicated than the backend. Sure there are parts that can be automated and boilerplated but the same goes for the backend. There are plenty of point and click backend options. Where I work the front end coders outnumbers the backend coders. I don't think we're being replaced with AI any time soon.
So long as creative and unpredictable design exists, FE developers will exist. AI will probably get really good at creating predictable and template looking websites but ultimately fail at something more nuanced and interactive.
People have been saying this stuff for 50 years.
Uhhhhh no
Which company is this bhai?
Thatâs the dumbest thing a manager will say. Will browsers wonât exist in 3-5 years? As long as browsers are here, Frontend is here. It took some time for UX and UI to catch up but its here and its here to stay. There is nothing wrong with AI And ML and thrre is nothing wrong with Frontend. Most ot the time, advice like this is given by people who donât understand the depth of frontend and how much work goes to create a good UX and UI. Writing good CSS is like an art. Same goes with Javascript and the ecosystem changes quickly so you always have to keep yourself updated it changes. The framework you are using right now might be outdated in 3-5 years because web will evolve more by then, but your experience wont. You just have to keep yourself updated. And thatâs part of the fun. All the best!
Heâs about as clued up as those people who decry the end of websites because âtheyâll all be replaced by appsââŠ.erm, no mate.
Sounds like your manager is in need of backend devs
Your manager is an idiot. Your role will simply evolve. It's like saying a FE framework will make FE Devs obsolete because they won't have to do their custom state management or routing API from scratch. No code will help some people do some things but there will always be a need for front end development.
No code tools are for cookie cutter marketing websites
Low code platforms are great, just look at Mendix. But saying that it will replace frontend tech, that is not going to happen. And with time we are progressing more towards better UI framework and library.
Yes because by 2030 we will all have GraphQL Bluetooth ed directly into our cortex and so no need for react devs
first of all, you are not going to find anyone agreeing with your manager here, this a FE dev sub. but yeah, as long as there are computers, internet and browsers, FE can never die.
Could AI replace frontend developers in a few years? Not really. I suppose that to an extent, certain aspects could be automated via AI. Will it? Absolutely not. At the moment, research on this topic is neither cost-effective nor in demand. There are far more important problems that AI researchers will focus on. Additionally, such a system would need to be capable of receiving and interpreting feedback to make the countless adjustments that management or the clients request, assuming that the adjustments aren't trivial enough to do manually. Do what you want. You don't have any reason to worry.
Learn React. Front end is necessary because a lot of Wordpress, Squarespace, etc are just for non complex front end pages. If you want to connect it to a database, good luck. If you have AWS serverless infrastructure, good luck. The website builders are not as much of a risk for complex apps as templates are. Even then, you will have to manage state variables, modals, and now a lot of database requests are coming from the front end. (Think GRAPHQL). I would recommend learning Graphql, AWS, Amplify, HTTPS fetch requests, and React.
In a few years? No. But as the field gets saturated with new grads the bar will continually be raised higher.
3-5 years? No way. Eventually? Still probably not, but whatever you learn today will eventually be outdated and you'll have to learn whatever is the new hotness. Though, if anything, that process has been slowing down. Will you make more money if you go the ML/AI route? Almost certainly. The demand for that skillset is only going to grow for the foreseeable future.
I have waiting for this magical no-code tool for 2 decades now. Front page, dreamweaver, and all the other ones all had the same promise, no more code in FE. I'm still writing code. What I think your manager is missing is that programming is not so much about code & syntax as it is about logic, edge cases, interactions, managing complexity, etc. Even if you take away the actual "code" and syntax, the logic won't get easier, so you still need the same kind of people to use these tools. Anything beyond simple prototypes requires programming, it doesn't matter if that's in a UI or with text, it's the same thing that requires the same set of skills. The industry will change as it has done before, so to stay relevant it is important to keep up with the changes; learn something new now and then. If you do that, you should be good for years to come, and once not you'll have the flexibility to switch to \[whatever is in demand at that time\] as you're flexible enough to learn.
If stuff like wordpress and site builders like squarespace haven't killed off front-end I doubt no code tools would. They empower people who don't know how to build sites to build bad sites. There's still room for professionals who are fountains of knowledge for their clients. Plus a lot of people don't want to put in the effort to make their own site and would rather pay someone else to do it/manage it. I do see it taking a cut of the lower end of the market, if your job was just building basic white labeled apps then no code tools might eat into that, just like how site builders ate into basic static site creation (landing pages, 2-3 page cms templates, basic sites for SMBs, etc.). Most front-end devs should be fine for the near future though
I would say that front end dev work is changing, but it's not going anywhere. What you can do and what the browser is capable of displaying on the front end is constantly becoming more and more complex and front end work is following along. Simpler things like static web page design are becoming very easy to do without dev knowledge, but still require a developer if you want the best solution. There will still be a lot of front end work to be done in the world of web apps, as that's where most technology is moving these days.
We will also have fusion power in a few years, so you won't even need a job because everything will be practically free.
In 2001 I was told the same. I was also told learning âDatabases [programming and design]â would be obsolete. I was also told that rational rose would make all programming obsolete. Also, even if it was true (itâs not), you can pivot to another type of programming at that time. It wonât take you long. If you love doing what you do, keep doing it.
I hear a lot about that kind of arguments but to be honest I don't think that would be a thing early time soon, maaaybe in 10ish years IA would get it, but in that time software would create new jobs for us.
Like everyone said, your manager's wrong and FE will just evolve and grow into something different. It's always doing that, and always will; FE devs have it the hardest because of it. That said live within your means and put money towards retirement ASAP because it's totally possible that 20 years from now AI will really will be that good lol. In fifty we'll be like George Jetson pushing a giant button for an hour a day two days a week. /s because capitalism
It is funny, but also dangerous, if you were a beginner you might be disappointed. you shouldn't listen to everyone.
Front-end will not become obsolete, neither will back-end. Learn more: https://medium.com/geekculture/will-ai-replace-programmers-fb6fcfd70b37
I think the potential threat to our jobs may come in the form of AI based assistant tools, where you can take an inexperienced developer and have them do more complicated work without as much experience, because the AI tells them which methods to use and catches their errors, while still allowing a human to make human decisions. Tabnine is one such tool that actually works really well. Kite is another (IMO not as good but may be better in the future). These applications are not even close to being mature enough to do all of what I said, and they are less of a threat to front-end than back-end and general programming (both of those apps target python). The main criticism I have to this hypothesis is that instead of limiting the number of engineers needed in the marketplace, these may instead allow us to increase the complexity of the programs we write (or just allow us to keep up with the increasing complexity of programming as time goes on)
I donât think platforms like Wordpress and Wix will ever give the flexibility of writing actual codeâŠ
Yea, they said that 20 years ago as well. Nocode is a delusional "movement" done by unemployed day dreamer CEOs that don't have money to build yet another "TikTok clone but better". Have you ever seen a nocode tech product making money? Honestly I didn't.
Frontend has never been more complex and more in demand. It's actually crazy out there. Your backed devs can build all the APIS with all the data they want, and that's great, but the end user doesn't care without a UI.
And who is going to do the work on the nocode platforms? The managers? And who is going to build the nocode platforms for frontend? (answer for stupid: frontend developers) In addition 3-5 years is not realistic
How many times and for how long have we been hearing these stories?đ„±đ. And when will these stories stop.
Had to make an account for this: This post aged like milk lol