Comment by gchamonlive
10 days ago
If I'd have to give you one piece of unsolicited advice, I'd tell you to seek some therapy so that you can overcome whatever trauma you had with front-end development that's clearly clouding your judgement. That is, if I'd give you that advice. Since I'm not, I'll only say that that's extremely disrespectful with everyone doing good work in user-facing application.
He's got a point though front end development is in a completly ridiculous state right now
And has been for over a decade now.
jquery was the high point.
When you are disrespectful and arrogant, whichever point you are trying to make no matter how valid it is becomes immediately tangential to what you are actually doing. Venting? Bashing? Ranting? All but valid criticism.
Frontend is in such a terrible state that whatever shit code LLM spits out is valid? Give me a break.
No it really is like that. "Frontend" aka jam everything into an all-consuming React/Vue mega project really isn't the most fun. It's very powerful, sometimes necessary (<50% of the times it's chosen), and the tooling is constantly evolving. But it's not a fun experience when it comes to maintaining and growing a large JS codebase... which is why they usually get reinvented every 3yrs. Generally an opposite experience with server side which stays stable for a decade+ without touching it and having a much closer relationship to the database makes better code IMO, less layers/duplication.
Frontend is very fun when you're starting a new project though.
Will copy from an answer I gave below:
I was replying to your comment about the state of frontend, not OP about using AI, just like the other replies you got.
Anyone admitting in public they use LLM output straight up without careful thought wouldn't get hired by me. But at the same time not everyone is building useful tools that people use... or is a professional.
But still in general I agree the sentiment of any backend dev who avoids modern frontend. The frontend world is the one who created this problem and continues doubling down on JS/React-everything and isolating frontends from backends, for little benefit besides minor DX gains (aka benefiting only the frontend dev, not the product or users).