Comment by WesolyKubeczek

3 hours ago

> frontend used to be a highly specialized skill, requiring knowledge of semantic HTML, CSS, the differences of various browsers, accessibility, progressive enhancement, network performance, interface design and user testing

I remember this period differently. The frontend work was mostly, sometimes solely, all about turning whatever monstrous PSD came from the designer’s sick mind into HTML, and getting shafted if the result was not pixel-for-pixel identical. When project leads heard the word “semantic”, they had to reach for the dictionary. Upon hearing the word “accessibility”, they would set the dictionary on fire.

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WesolyKubeczek

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wongarsu  3 hours ago

And knowing the differences between various browsers meant negotiating whether the layout being 3px off on Internet Explorer was acceptable, or whether we should ship different CSS files for different browsers to fix this discrepancy

actionfromafar  3 hours ago

I think there might have been two overlapping periods, but it definitely started out as you said. What I wonder is, will AI increase frontend churn, or calm it down? (More churn would be, new frontends because of new frontend frameworks, AI accelerated, less churn would be, because AI is trained on what existed before)

I think I also reject the premise of the article, that frameworks caused frontends dev to de-skill. For sure, that happened to some extent. But it also caused a lot of frontend devs to be incredibly skilled in their chosen niche. (React for instance.)

  • WesolyKubeczek  2 hours ago

    > will AI increase frontend churn, or calm it down?

    The former. It’s definitely the former, at least until subsidized tokens run out.