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You can go back further than the article describes as well. Back in the 90s the same sorts of articles were written about how WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage, Dr
by JimDabell 1y ago
You can go back further than the article describes as well. Back in the 90s the same sorts of articles were written about how WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc. were going to make web developers obsolete.
- 0x445442 1y agoNext hot YC startup... Training AI on UML diagrams :)
- ohadron 1y agoTook a while but Wix / Webflow / SquareSpace / Wordpress did end up automating a bunch of work.
- JimDabell 1y agoThey did, but do you think there are more or fewer web development jobs now compared with the 90s?
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoThere is a whole lot of brochure type web work that has disappeared, either to these site builders or Facebook. I don't know what happened to the people doing that sort of work but I would assume most weren't ready to write large React apps.
- JimDabell 1y agoWhy are you assuming that? How do you think all the new React jobs were filled? React developers don’t magically spring into existence with a full understanding of React out of nowhere, they grow into the job.
- ohadron 1y agoThe web developer / web page ratio in 2025 is for sure way lower than it was in 1998.
- JimDabell 1y agoWhy should anybody care about that metric? People care about jobs.
- usersouzana 1y agoMore, but that doesn't say anything about the future.
- JimDabell 1y agoSure it does. It’s not a guarantee, but presuming that a pattern is likely to continue is not nothing. When a pattern is observed, the onus is on the “This time is different!” side to make their case.
- usersouzana 1y agoThe aim of AI is to automate almost everything. That sounds like a future quite different from any past.
- JimDabell 1y agoIf you don’t accept that an observed trend says anything about the future, you shouldn’t make unsupported assertions in the opposite direction. They say less.
- usersouzana 1y agoAI aiming to automate everything is something new. That's the point. There was no AI in the past similar to what is slowly unfolding now. Not even close. If you disagree with the word "anything" i used, then yes i understand i shouldn't have used this word.
- dnpls 1y agoSame thing for designers, "anyone can create a website now with squarespace/webflow/framer" - cue the template markets, where the templates are made by - you guessed - designers...
- commandlinefan 1y agoIn the 70's, articles were written about how business people could use high level languages like SQL to obsolete developers. In the 60's, it was COBOL.