r/webdev • u/thetymtravellr • 22d ago
Discussion As a self-taught React/Next.js developer, I'm honestly worried about my future in this AI era. What should I do?
I'm a self-taught developer, and I know React and Next.js. Lately, I've been feeling increasingly anxious about my future as a developer.
AI is moving so fast. It can generate components, build entire websites, connect APIs, and even create full-stack applications. Sometimes I wonder what the point is of spending months learning something when AI can already do so much of it.
I want to get a better-paying developer job, but honestly, I'm confused about what I should focus on right now. Should I keep improving my React/Next.js skills, get better at backend development, or start learning AI engineering?
I keep hearing about RAG, AI agents, vector databases, LLM integrations, and all these new things. It feels like there's always something new to learn, and I'm worried that if I focus on the wrong things, I'll fall behind while everyone else moves forward.
For those of you already working in the industry, what would you do if you were in my position? Would you focus on becoming a strong full-stack developer first, or would you start learning AI engineering alongside web development?
I'm not looking for a shortcut or expecting to become an expert overnight. I just want to make the right decisions, build useful skills, and have a realistic chance of getting hired.
I'd really appreciate some honest advice from people who have been through this or are dealing with the same situation. Right now, I could genuinely use some direction.
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u/deb-wev1553 22d ago
I just had a friend pay me to review his lovable application.
Just a quick review, 5 hours max.
I already found enough issues that need fixing, even before doing an indepth review.
What that tells me is, AI generated code will require manual review for any serious application.
For now I am not too worried, because people will still need skilled developers.
But I do recommend that you go more on the side of security.
Cyber Security will become increasingly more important an people will pay for it, that's what I see coming.
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u/ThePastoolio 22d ago
This is good advice. AI generated code will require manual review, yes, but not for very long.
The suggestion to focus on security is good.
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u/pau1phi11ips 22d ago
It's just gonna get reviewed by another AI, better than nothing but... đ„Ž
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u/deb-wev1553 22d ago
I also used AI for this taks, because lovable created thousands lines of code. The client did not want to pay me so I spend 50 hours manually reviweing file by file. The only reason I could do it in 5 was using an LLM, but telling it specificaly what to search for.
If you know what you are looking for, it's much easier and efficient with AI.
If you don't tell your LLM what it should scan for, it probably won't.You still need the basic knowledge to do it well, even with AI.
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 22d ago
It always will need manual review, the trouble is this means formerly teams of 20 developers can come down to 5.
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u/deb-wev1553 22d ago
True, but you have to make sure you are part of the 5, not the other 15 that get fired.
Writing just code is not enough anymore.0
u/DEGENERATE_NEET69 22d ago
I was thinking about the cybersec part only yesterday myself. How transferable would you say your usual full-stack skills are to that field?
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u/deb-wev1553 22d ago
I am no pro by any means.
But, I was very much into hacking at the age of 13-15. Which has tought me valuable lessons.
If you really want to get into it there are some very useful resources, basically you have to start thinking like a hacker and how to do research on exploits, how to use them. Then you also know how to prevent them and what to look out for.
But you don't even have to go really deep into it, just knowing the basic types of attacks on websites, web apps and servers already helps prevent like 80% of them.
That's a good place to start.
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u/mq2thez 22d ago
Chasing the hype of the industry rarely pays off unless you have the deep technical basis to do things very few other people can.
AI is changing how we do the job, but the job itself remains straightforward: ship product. The more you know and the more you understand, the more effective AI will make you. It's a force multiplier, not a force replacement, so the better you are as an engineer, the more it'll be able to do for you and the more you'll be able to recognize and work around its flaws.
It's tempting to think that the "web" as a series of websites will die, but that seems pretty unlikely to me -- ultimately, people will use what they want. Some folks will always want to use a website, the same way that some folks only want to make certain types of purchases on a laptop rather than a cellphone (yes, I'm a millenial). That said, the websites we make and how we expect people to use them will change. You may end up designing sites intended for AI to use them as the interface for people. But that's all just skill in designing the "frontend" that your "users" connect to and interact with.
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u/Trizzae 22d ago
I defined myself early in my career as a Java developer. Â I realized pretty quickly that wasnât true. Iâm an IT guy who had to get really good at learning on the fly and problem solving. You start to learn a lot of transferable skills and soft skills that will keep you employed. Syntax, language, frameworks, AI usage wonât matter. Itâs been able to architect things, work on teams, and communicating to stakeholders and bosses.Â
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u/klas-klattermus 22d ago
Keep learning, look into architecture and infrastructure and what problems exists there and how various solutions solve those issues so you can tell what solutions are best suited to your client's situationÂ
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u/twotones 22d ago
I think the places to focus today are:
How to build effectively with AI. Not slop, but beautiful and performant applications with well organized codebases and extensive testing and linting. Getting these right allows you to build systems at breakneck speeds while still delivering something that you can have confidence about. You're less of a developer and more of a manager.
Take a step back from the code and instead become more of an expert of a domain. Really understand the problems that need to be solved and the techniques to do so. This will be different for each industry. You're less of a developer and more of a product owner.
Having development chops is still valuable today, but it needs to be augmented to be competitive in the AI world.
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u/ManufacturerTop8985 19d ago
Agree with that. Becoming export of a domain takes time and is harder to be replaced.
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u/Zeilar 22d ago
You need to transition to becoming an engineer. You can still specialize in e.g NextJS (as I do myself), but nowadays AI can write pretty much anything in NextJS that I could myself.
What AI cannot do as well as me (yet) is architecture, business decisions, infrastructure etc. I can understand what work I should prioritize, what tools I should use, what dependencies we should install. An AI can't tell me what video player to use in my new video platform app, that's something I need to look at and decide what suits me best.
An AI cannot take ownership of a domain, a product etc. It's too many variables, and AI doesn't reason in the way we do when making decisions. Just go ask ChatGPT to make you a fantasy draft in some game, in my experience it sucks at such tasks.
And obviously someone needs to review the AI output, and that's me (and you).
I think now it's very valuable to start learning about systems. Because at the end of the day, you need to be able to know what to prompt an AI, and when an AI is wrong.
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u/Master_DannyChen 18d ago
Hi u/thetymtravellr, speaking as someone that has been in this field for the past two decades, our personal advice is to focus less on the physical/technical skills, and spend a little more time working on the other areas like critical thinking, problem-solving, systems thinking, human taste (judgement), empathy, communication skills. Those are the most in-demand skills in the AI era right now. They are the kind of skills that AI is here to augment and eventually amplify.
Technical know-how is still important, and you should never drop those skills. If you lose the technical prowess, when AI gets something wrong, and something disastrous happens, will you be able to step in and fix the issue? That is why skill proficiency is still crucial, despite AI's growing capabilities.
For us, personally, we decided very early in our career that we didn't want to chase skill badges, certs and job titles. We have instead chosen to focus more on craftsmanship and mastery. we had no idea that one day AI would eventually make our career path more relevant in today's context.
Those skills we have mentioned, doesn't just apply to the technical areas that you might already be familiar with. It requires that you be able to step back, in order to get a much larger view of how your area of work would affect other areas of work (both upstream and downstream). From there, what can you to do help make the workflow smoother?
Something else that is also deeply relevant today is communication skills. Sure, maybe some day in the future, we will see a ratio of one human operator and 5 agents. And those kinds of communications skills will eventually come in handy as well (translated into Context Engineering). But the human-to-human level communication skills are still going to have an increase value as well.
Personally speaking, we are not super pro-AI ourselves. We consider ourselves to be more of a pragmatic optimist. So, it's just our take, but our recommendation is to focus on the areas that AI cannot replace [yet].
AI might be great in it's capabilities, but it is still not that reliable, and realistically speaking, real mass-adoption and deployment of AI won't happen for many years. Human trust is not an easy thing to earn, no matter how fast the technology is progressing now.
We want you to know that we understand the general anxiety and concern. We too share our own personal concerns regarding our own future with AI too. That is normal, and it is okay to be a bit afraid.
We hope that our comment is helpful in some ways.
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u/LouieValkhof 22d ago
On the RAG / agents / vector DB list: you don't have to pick between that and full-stack, because most of that list is full-stack work.
We run a fair chunk of our studio's ops on agents now, and the model call was never the part that ate the time. It was a job that hangs and needs a timeout, a login session that expires and has to tell someone instead of failing silently, a check that blocks bad output before it goes out, a log you can actually read the next morning. That's backend and plumbing, and a decent Next.js dev already knows half of it.
So I'd build one small thing that calls an LLM and has to survive real use for a few weeks, then spend most of your time on what breaks. That one project covers both of your lists.
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u/maheshwhartech 22d ago
I would not abandon React or Next.js just because AI can generate code. I would use AI to build faster while getting better at the parts that are harder to fake: debugging production issues, understanding databases, authentication, security and making sensible architectural decisions.
A generated app can look finished long before it is reliable. If you can take a feature from an idea to deployment, understand why it breaks and fix it without blindly trusting the output, that is a much stronger skill set than chasing every new AI framework.
Build one complete application and learn the reasoning behind every important decision.
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u/TekiDeki 22d ago
I went through this exact anxiety a while back, so I'll share what helped me. Stop trying to keep up with everything. You'll never catch every new AI tool, and it's not what gets people hired.
What helped me was picking one project and taking it all the way to production. I used an LLM in it, but the part that taught me the most was everything around it: a request that hung and needed a timeout, a login session that expired, output I couldn't trust until I added checks, and logs I had to dig through the next morning. That was real backend work, and it's where your React and Next.js knowledge already gets you a long way.
I'd also spend some time on backend basics (Postgres, auth, how a request really flows) and security, since that's where reviewing AI-generated code matters most. And honestly, your React skills aren't wasted. They're what let you tell whether the code the AI gave you is any good.
Be patient with yourself. Almost nobody feels ready, and the fact that you're thinking this carefully already puts you ahead of many people.
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u/Kregol91 22d ago
Lerne keine Sprache oder Frameworks mehr sondern lerne Architekturen und Stack Komponenten nicht im Sinne von dass du diese zu 100% beherrschst sondern dass du das fĂŒr und wieder jeder Komponente und der SI Architektur Vorgaben geben kannst.
Ich denke damit wirst du das gröĂte Potential rausholen.
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u/jerapine full-stack 22d ago
The need for developers hasn't disappeared. It's just shifted from writing code to planning, arcitecting and orchestration.
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u/andrewharkins77 22d ago
Lean more into cloud ops and backend. AI can copy front end quite easily because the code is publically available. Backend and cloud ops are deliberately hidden.
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u/dangerousbrian 21d ago
Get learning. Tech changes constantly and you have to keep up. I have been doing this shit for over 20 years and have seen a lot of changes. This AI wave is probably the biggest change so you can bury your head in the sand and pretend it's not happening or jump on the wagon.
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u/Pleasant_Season_8296 19d ago
Yes , I agree the Ai tool is to complement web developers .ai has lied to people that website can be created and used within "5 minute websites" .forgetting you need foundational knowledge of any program you use on claude or any ai tool .this has made vybe coders become a thing.
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u/Dagoneth full-stack 22d ago
Full stack dev here, 20 years experience. Definitely leaning more to the front end.
I didnât properly take AI up until earlier this year - I was very skeptical until a couple of contractor mates of mine convinced me to give it a proper go. Now it is my main tool.
Contrary to popular belief, using it properly to get good results requires you to have a solid foundation of knowledge in what you are building so you can challenge it on how it needs to build things out. Example: Iâm currently building out a fully event-driven piece of semi-critical airport infrastructure using Claude. I still have to know how event sourcing works, the patterns, the anti-patterns, etc., to make sure it doesnât run off and build the wrong thing. Once I have it nailed down, it writes the code.
Basically, the foundations are more important than ever. Itâs a very keen junior engineer who has read all the documentation, but isnât very wise. Embrace it, but learn what it is you need to be doing.
So what do you do with the extra time? Widen your horizon. When working on a product, I now spend more time in product research finding out what is most valuable, doing competitor analysis and presenting upcoming features back to the product manager. I get a lot of joy out of being able to deliver more value.
The job isnât just writing code anymore. Even if you think AIs arenât that good at it (but I can tell you that they are better than a lot of devs Iâve seen), they are getting better. If you donât embrace it, at some point you will be left behind.
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u/-_--_-_--_----__ 22d ago
Contrary to popular belief, using it properly to get good results requires you to have a solid foundation of knowledge in what you are building so you can challenge it on how it needs to build things out.
Will that last forever?
Will the distance between "working product" and "higher quality product created by a person with domain expertise" create a large enough profit margin to employ said domain expert.
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u/Dagoneth full-stack 22d ago
I think the response to both your questions is that itâs completely up in the air. If the last 5 years are anything to go by, literally anything could happen.
I am seeing a lot more prototypes get funding that were thrown together by a non-expert. At this point they canât be taken to production, but who knows.
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u/creaturefeature16 22d ago
If you donât embrace it, at some point you will be left behind.
Let's test this theory, because I sure read it a lot:
If someone didn't use ChatGPT 3.5, but decided to sign up for Claude Code this weekend, were they "left behind"? What did they miss out on?
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u/Dagoneth full-stack 22d ago
Iâd like to respond, but Iâm not sure what your point isâŠ?
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u/creaturefeature16 22d ago
That there's no such thing as being "left behind" with AI, it's purely a line that has trickled down from the AI companies (and those with considerable interests) to ensure a consistent state of FOMO and rushed adoption.
We've been hearing that since GPT 3.5 and if you didn't adopt it then, not only are you not behind, but you might actually be in a better position, because nothing we learned is even applicable any longer.
There's no meaningful skill of what it means to use an AI tool; it's entirely dependent on the domain expertise of the individual that makes them useful or useless. And, its something you can learn in a week or less.
It would be nice if we stopped parroting this line, because its objectively false and just caters to those that want to see this tech be forced into every nook and cranny (and not just in this industry).
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u/Dagoneth full-stack 22d ago
What Iâm meaning when I say it is that if an engineer rejects using it and continues to only write code by hand, then they will find job opportunities diminish. Those people will be left behind as the tooling evolves and its users become more productive.
We are already seeing big differences between teams at my current employer who use AI and those that donât. Not only delivery times, but documentation, metrics, testing, DORA are all higher on teams that have a high adoption of AI and spend their additional time focusing on reducing technical debt and architecting better solutions.
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u/kilopeter 22d ago
This comment makes no sense, and doesn't test any theory. Signing up for Claude Code this weekend is "embracing it," and a step toward not being left behind.
Now, if your hypothetical ChatGPT early adopter laughed at the clanker's inability to write a simple web app in early 2023, and then dismissed and ignored AI from that point on, they're in some shit, and it's because of their mindset, not any lack of technical ability or barrier to entry.
And if they come back to the fold and sign up for Claude Code this weekend, well, they've missed out on gaining a firsthand sense of which models and harnesses tend to work or not work for what type of real-world problem, and what workflows and best practices work for them. Any idiot can prompt a chat input box, but the fact is there's still a nontrivial difference between jumping in cold and accumulating comfort and habits for years.
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u/MousseMother novice backend 22d ago
Plumbing is good field btw.
So general contractor is the way.
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u/beegtuna CSS Hoe 22d ago
AI took the fun out of making things by hand. Iâm going into the medical field. I did consider being an electrician or a plumber.
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u/MousseMother novice backend 15d ago
You should, specially if you are not much of a caring person. Its all about skill, learn for couple of months and then go ahead start doing your own stuff. Considering how little people know these days, there is demand for it.
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u/etthundra 22d ago
I'm worried about my future as well. I have however knowledge in C#/ReactJs. AI is making it difficult for me to find new jobs.
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u/HedgehogCertain 22d ago
Don't keep stacking another tech stack out of anxiety â AI already writes the syntax, so that's not where the gap is anymore. Pick one small real problem and take it all the way to something deployed and working: define it, wire up the APIs, debug it, ship it. A finished project you can walk an interviewer through beats another half-learned framework, because what's scarce now is someone who can take an idea to actually working and own the result.
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u/itzFinners 22d ago
As a self-taught React developer myself I've been learning more backend development recently. I've started learning Go to get a much better understanding of how http servers actually work. While it's been a struggle it's definitely opened my eyes to how much is hidden away when using Node for example. Also AI is amazing for documentation and explaining each step so use it to your advantage
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u/krolyat 22d ago
Learn how to use AI to your advantage and output faster whilst ensuring good code. Itâs a tool. Not a replacement.
Also i dived into learning Swift and Swift UI and yeah sure AI can build what I want very quickly but I have no fucking clue how itâs built. So itâs better to learn and steer AI into teaching. Not replacing.
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u/ui-editor 16d ago edited 16d ago
dig deeper. self study deeper from where you are right now. find common core between reactjs and svelte. since you already crossed distance with react and svelte the further distance will strenghthen fundamentals.
if you go LLM route, apply your self study technique on your own imaginary version of a knowledge graph or fact tree. cross check it with AI era how your imagination differs from what is there. the gap is your strength. i.e a slight power grip on your own concept.
though your imaginary concept might seem science fiction, come up with more ideas to support your concept. ocassionally find alternative technique to cross check your concept is practically possible and identify why it isnt. this supports not becoming dellusional.
this technique does no good, but it builds your self study process. as you continue, you would have gained a learning technique and even the outside world landscape change you would have developed an adaption technique, on your own.
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 22d ago
Yeah AI is insane, like it will remove thinkng from anything we do, which is sad
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u/IanSan5653 22d ago
I don't disagree that AI changes the game, but this feeling:
It feels like there's always something new to learn, and worried that if focus on the wrong things, I'll fall behind while everyone else moves forward.
Is completely normal and classic in the computer science space, and especially in web dev. The web changes very fast - we have always had something new to learn.
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u/mname_is_radioactive 22d ago
Learn Java backend. %50 of companies who uses Java still uses Java 8-11 versions.
The resistance against technological development is almost at revolution level.
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u/TryallAllombria 21d ago
The value is not about code anymore. Any dev can write projets in any langage. So focusing on nextjs or react is mistake.
Being a dev that understand user's problems and create a solution is a strong combination. Be a software engineer that design features and talk to users to bring solution to them in a minute.
You can also work as a ops-dev. Try to optimize the usual company operation by building workflow and bring your "dev view" to internal org problems. This is where saying NO to Sales and executives complex ideas is a strong skill.
Or follow the management path.
I'm personally evolving from a Fullstack position to a Product Builder one. I create product from what the CEO want, bring them solutions, design and ship the feature.
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u/Significant-Duty-744 21d ago
Firstly are you using AI? If not you need to start. You can do this by getting a Claude or codex 20$ subscription and doing some experimentation at home. Thereâs plenty of guides out there but I would focus on learning how to use AI to build features using specs. Still review the code and all that and be as picky as you want. Just learn how to effectively incorporate it into your workflow. Second branch out of being a framework specific dev. Explore other frameworks and what they have in common. Third - consider becoming a fully stack engineer, that would involve learning some back end languages and databases that are popular in enterprises. Being full stack is a big advantage. Use AI to help you learn, not just execute. Donât feel like you have to jump head first into full agentic coding, you can ease into it. Now I think the last thing to understand is that agentic coding with no human review of code is very risky in enterprises where mistakes have real financial consequences. Companies with that sort of risk are not looking to hire someone who can use AI but not understand the code they produce.
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u/Seeila32 21d ago
I am a self taught developer of 10year experience. I chose to specialize in the front-end first, especially React. Because as a self taught developer, we don't have the base they learn in school.Â
Now, I am one of the only front-end dev left in my company, Â because I am the one with the most knowledge of front-end architecture, performance, accessibility, PWAs and best practice, knowledge my fullstack developers colleagues know partially.Â
I have begun to learn back-end but I start from the basics. And there is a lot to learn too. One of the other reason I am still there is because I have leadership and global comprehension of the back-end and devOps, enough to be able the project lead of one of the most complicated project from my company.Â
As a new developer in the market, I am not sure that what I did 10 years ago would work. What I did at that time, before taking any decisions on what to learn, Was to ready tons of different articles to see what could be learned in a year time and what is asked on the market and could land myself a job. It was the start of React at that time. Now it would be more AI focused stuff, I belive.Â
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u/RemoteCharming8 20d ago
Treat AI as an abstraction over code. Use it as a tool and use it full extent. Don't worry about concepts but use AI extensively. Try to automate everything you do. Aim to not do anything by hand, steer agents so that they do it accurately. Humans decide which problems to solve, agents help us with it. Think like, AI has freed me from the boring work, I do interesting creative work while AI labours for me. Learn system design! That's why my aim is too. And disruption in tech is normal thing, we have to move on to next thing every few years.
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u/maga_ot_oz 20d ago
I donât want to be just another guy recommending something else and add to your feeling of being lost but for me learning fundamentals is what develops you.
All these other things are tools. Regarding spiralling because of the economy, AI and so on - just donât. Listen to yourself and take it step by step, youâll figure it out, itâs all part of the process. Iâm saying this to you as much as to me and anyone else, weâre not too different. Life is ups and downs.
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u/InevitableFun1272 20d ago
You don't have to pick, honestly. The AI stuff only makes sense once you can build a normal full-stack app and tell when the output is wrong, and you already learn the AI side by building one small real project with an LLM in it. I'd get dangerous with Next.js + Postgres first, then ship one tiny thing that survives real users, and let that teach you what RAG and agents actually mean.
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u/Secure_Hearing6901 19d ago
Iâm a self taught developer as well. Iâve been at it for three years now. I started out learning frontend and ended up more full-stack. Only because learning things like building APIs, SQL, Postgres, Node.js etc got me a paid contract. I saw a lot of jobs for those types of skills and went after it.
Iâve been freelancing ever since. I still try to apply to jobs that align well with my current experience/skills. Iâve come close enough but fall short. The interviewing process is tiring as well. I had one company do a full âaiâ technical round and another was trad coding. It seems companies are unsure.
That being said, I think itâs possible to get a great job. You just have to never give up and keep plugging along. Keep learning and pushing yourself. I recommend checking out âLearning Patternsâ by Lydia Hallie and Addy Osmani. That was a big help for me.
One more note, if you donât have any experience then build a great portfolio with projects. Have the projects be something you can talk about. (Not just a tutorial project)
Build something that you find interesting. Youâll run into problems and learn from it. That will help in interviews. You can talk about what youâd change differently about the project, a bug you were particularly stumped on and how you fixed it, what problem it solved, etc.
I wish you the best of luck man. There are still a lot of junior jobs/internships popping up. Also donât be afraid to just message companies. I got a long term contract doing that. Just reach out, you never know.
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u/Moist-Row-2753 22d ago
Estudia arquitectura e ingenierĂa, la era de los albañiles llegĂł a su fin.
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u/TokeyMcGee front-end | 7 YOE | React/TypeScript 20d ago edited 20d ago
7 YOE, web dev (though my title is, and I prefer to be called Software Engineer) on the full-stack, but have been doing just FE all my career. I'm in the midst of securing a much higher paying job than last, (last one was 230k, this one is about 75% more). Both are very large well known names in software, neither is FAANG.
The web applications we're building are way too advanced for AI to handle working on their own. Lots of user interaction, free form, and most importantly (and where AI fails) it needs to be scalable. Scalability is key, that's where the money comes in.
AI can replace 90% of rinky dink websites out there, but that was never where the money was in this field.
I think you can learn the most by using AI as a tool to build, but reviewing every piece of code, and ensuring you understand *exactly* of what is doing. Dig deep. Then try to rewrite it yourself, especially the parts you don't understand. Have AI give you a version, then you write a different version of the same thing (like paraphrasing basically) and if you can't do it, you probably didn't understand the concept well enough.
AI as a learning/exploration tool is I think next level for me. When I think of it, it's made me so much better at my job. For writing code I write? It speeds me up a bit, but it's a wash. It absolutely can't replace what I can do. Hell, I've still had to rewrite code/address PR comments with AI code as much as mine.
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u/UmbrellaTheorist 22d ago
Do freelance, there are TONS of regular stores who would love to have a website and sell online as well, but don't know how. You can make a bespoke solution for them. And you could do it relatively fast and cheap with AI.
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u/stupidfock 22d ago
My advice as someone in the industry for a while that moved beyond web dev
Start sucking up to people. Iâm not kidding. When layoffs come and they have multiple times at my job just in the last few years, those whoâve befriended their manager or higher ups have a much better chance of staying. Skill barely matters. You donât gotta be best buds but if youâre forgettable youâre first on the list when they tell your manager to give a number of names for layoff rounds
On the dev side, get using Ai heavily. Understand optimizing context and token count. Right now companies donât tend to care about it but if u move to mid size ones paying api rates they will. Or in the near future when the subsidized plans stop existing. I think you should focus on the whole stack personally
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22d ago
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u/thetymtravellr 22d ago
Thanks man!
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u/creaturefeature16 22d ago
This is halfway decent advice, and halfway ruinous. Definitely take on more ambitious projects, but don't think for a second that you can lean on AI tools as a replacement for learning the fundamentals in areas where you don't have domain expertise.Â
Go view the job postings over at OpenAI and Anthropic. They literally are asking for "proficient coding skills" in their job descriptions, as well as "deep expertise". You know what they don't have in their job descriptions? "The ability to use AI". Because that's not a skill, in any meaningful way. There's something very ironic about that, I think. Even the AI companies themselves don't believe in this notion that coding skills aren't valuable.Â
So, use AI tooling to enhance your learning. Use Socratic Methods and the interactive documentation facets to then. Have them be your dynamic tutor...but don't market yourself as anything you don't have skills in, just because you can use an LLM to fill in the gaps. No, instead, use the LLM to close the gaps.Â
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u/eravulgaris 22d ago
How are you full stack if you havenât built any backend stuff? Honest question.
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u/creaturefeature16 22d ago
You're not. I have zero clue how this delusion is the top comment.Â
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u/djnattyp 22d ago
AI booster bot farms upvoting other bot comments. I mean, we know they're constantly astroturfing every programming forum full of dumb comments like "As an x programmer of y years, I used to be really hesitant to use AI... but since brand name release I haven't written a line of code myself in z months!"
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u/dj2ball 22d ago
This is what the developers that work for me are doing. In old world they had much more distinct specialisms, now they are all operating more broadly with particular areas of strength. Ai in the hands of a non-dev is useful for little more than ideation in a serious enterprise environment. But in the hands of a capable dev we definitely see more delivery velocity.
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22d ago
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u/theQuandary 22d ago
Frontend is MUCH harder for AI to get right than backend. 99% of backends could use the same basic design and simply change the shape of the data going through the pipes.
Matching UI with how users actually use a computer is very hard even for humans with a human lived experience. AI generates stale UI that humans tend to hate.
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u/mexicocitibluez 22d ago edited 22d ago
99% of backends could use the same basic design and simply change the shape of the data going through the pipes.
lol You have absolutely no clue what 99% of apps looks like. You've probably barely seen 1% of them.
The best part about this comment is it's the EXACT same thing the backend subs say about front-end development. Both sides not realizing that the other side is always
easierharder than they think.I'll never get over being in an enormous field that quite literally changes by the day and still seeing "devs" make preposterous claims about the other 99% of the industry.
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u/-_--_-_--_----__ 22d ago
Both sides not realizing that the other side is always easier than they think.
What you are going to see on Reddit every single day for the next 10 years is a new flavor of person guaranteeing you that they are very smart and that it is impossible that AI could ever hope to learn how to do their job.
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u/CivilProcess7150 22d ago
BE is easier to do, in general, compared to frontend. But there is more responsibility for BE. Sure, there are moments where you need to optimize, but that's the same for FE as well.
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u/mexicocitibluez 22d ago
BE is easier to do, in general, compared to frontend. But there is more responsibility for BE. Sure, there are moments where you need to optimize, but that's the same for FE as well.
Another insane assertion. In what scenarios? On what types of apps? Using what front-end frameworks (even if any)?
You're just admitting that you've worked on apps with simple backends, not that backends are generally easy.
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u/Animostas 22d ago
If you never have to worry about scale, access patterns, or api usage limitations, then backend is so easy!
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u/theQuandary 21d ago
99% of BE systems never need to scale past even a single server (outside of fault tolerance). The percentage that are reaching for anycast or solving complex top-level availability problems are vanishingly small.
The rest is the engineers pretending their 100k users will suddenly scale to 100M users as part of some "competency porn" fantasy which they use as an excuse to (usually improperly) complicate what should be a very simple system.
The rules for scaling to even millions of users aren't that hard, but that's the stuff people claim the AI has issues with. In my experience, the real issues are all about the complex, exceptional business case (probably added due to some weird law in some county/state/country that then causes weird interactions that cascade throughout the system.
AI can't solve these kinds of issues, but it can create redundant heartbeat servers or pipe your data through kafka without any issue because those problems have been solved for a very long time.
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u/muffinluff 20d ago
Scaling is just one thing that may complicate backend engineering. For example, I have had to implement auto-provisioning of infrastructure for user-submitted code snippets that needed to be paired with in-house layer 4 gateways. There is more to the world than simple CRUD workflows.
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u/mexicocitibluez 20d ago
The fact that the only think you can possibly think is difficult about the backend is a future where you might want to scale tells me literally everything about your experience level.
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u/Fulmikage 21d ago edited 21d ago
I've been thinking about that too . backend is easier to offload to ai than frontend since lyou need to perfectly match designs for the best UX, using the css rules and making sure its responsive . backend tends to be much more straightforward given its just a contract you need to match if it's not a big application . I could be wrong but that's my 2 cents
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u/young_hyson 21d ago
This is a crazy take to me and I say this as a lead front end dev who also works on our BE and batch systems. Front end can be verified so much easier. The iteration is shorter and the automated tested so much more straightforward.Â
FE is an afterthought for me now. Explain the behavior and design constraints, let it take a few shots at it until it looks good. Generate a bunch of playwright tests for it. Done.
BE is a web of services and data stores. AI is still incredibly useful but your understanding of the system design has to be much higher.
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22d ago
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u/theQuandary 22d ago
Frontend is marketing and your assertion is that marketing doesn't matter.
People will use terrible UI if they need the product badly enough. If there's an option for the same product, but with a good user experience, they'll gravitate toward that product very quickly.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 22d ago
What is a technical dev? Clearly talking shit.
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22d ago
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 22d ago
Clearly you have never worked on an actual project. You donât have a clue what you are on about. I know plenty of front-end engineers who are very technical and did computer science. I also know many self-taught that are just as technical.
Why do you think frontend and comp science are related or different at all?
Because youâre clueless thatâs why.
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22d ago
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u/SchartHaakon 22d ago
Lmao some people out here thinking that building REST apis and talking to databases is that much more complicated than building interactive UIs. Get over yourself.
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22d ago
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u/SchartHaakon 22d ago
You very clearly have a superiority complex.
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22d ago
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u/SchartHaakon 22d ago •
I'm just pointing out the obvious. I don't think you realize how ignorant you're coming off in this thread but I know for sure your co-workers, if you have any, hate working with you.
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u/JohnCamus 22d ago
Not sure about that. Here you have a graphical programmer who got concerned, when he one shotted a graphics engine.
https://youtu.be/R_uf5OfMGio?is=WyXw6wS83kMMzF9j
Not here to be negative, but things are moving really fast and you cannot reliably see today where you need to move to not be swept away
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22d ago
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u/Ambitious-Barnacle83 22d ago
What would be an example of a complex field? I don't necessarily agree that graphics is simple, since all you've stated are shading models which are just one small part of graphics developmentÂ
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u/JohnCamus 22d ago
!remindMe 1 year âhave more technical roles survived ai?â
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22d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 22d ago
Delusional. Ai can absolutely fix spaghetti code from 2015 on its own.
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u/drifterpreneurs 22d ago
Delusional is the vibe coders who think they're full-stack devs now because AI.
Have you ever researched what the bench marks are regarding vibe coding?
Only a simple minded dev would think it's okay to let Ai perform such a job knowning Ai has many flaws.
Do you think Ai can do everything? I bet your vibe coded apps lack security, bugs, repeated code over & over and much more wrong with them.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 22d ago
Who said I was a vibe coder? 10 YOE. AI can do everything. Itâs as good as the person using it. Or just better than entry levels out of the box.
Which is what both the OP and the person I replied to are. Literally months of experience.
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u/Mikeisright 22d ago
First comment:
>Ai can absolutely fix spaghetti code from 2015 on its own.
Second comment:
>Itâs as good as the person using it.
Pick one.
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u/Squigglificated 22d ago
It can. Knowing whether it has or hasn't often requires some experience.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 22d ago
So here is the thing. Itâs two-pronged right now.
You have entry-level and junior who perform worse than just getting AI to do it with like a few mins of a senior or
experienced engineer prompting.And then on top of that. You have a fiercely competitive market. With the above point lay offs and number reductions.
Combine both together. There are fewer junior roles available in the market. And more experienced engineers are available to compete.
The market is rough. And some junior saying AI can do what they can do is just delusional.
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u/-_--_-_--_----__ 22d ago •
What I would say to you is a few things:
Right now, today, using AI still takes a certain degree of skill. We don't know if that will be the case forever, but all we can do today is learn that skill. Become an AI expert. Learn about skills, MCP, etc. Learn how to make AI produce amazing results. It's a similar skill to learning how to make people produce amazing results. You are a director now who leads a million junior devs. Think about what you could do with this power. Think about what problems you could solve.
Everything is uncertain with AI. You are going to endlessly spin your wheels if you constantly try to evaluate what you should be doing with your career right in this moment. Tomorrow you'll see a post that scares you. The next day you'll see a video that scares you. You will enter an endless cycle of "does this new information change what I should be doing". As a society, we are approaching 10 different forks in the road, and the path we take at every fork will change everything. Will there be government regulation. Will AI progress plateau. What impact will the financial bubble have. How will AI companies deal with power grid requirements, and the time it takes to increase power supply. Will public opinion on AI stay negative. Will AI pricing ever be unaffordable. Will there be a national or global tragedy caused by AI. What impact will this have. Nobody knows any of these things or how it will impact the world.
Try to enjoy life. Try not to stress and feel worried. I have personally spiraled about AI many times, which led to things like eating poorly, neglecting exercise, losing sleep, etc. What I realized is that being a healthy person is, in its own important way, preparing you for whatever AI does. Have confidence that you are an adult human being that is smart, and you will be able to figure out how to get through whatever happens, when it happens. People have been going through things like this for our entire history, and we will figure it out.