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I worked for web SaaS companies for a long time because money. I saw this coming when React came along. No one knows or cares about the whole stack. Training ad

by sdcfgy 1mo ago

I worked for web SaaS companies for a long time because money. I saw this coming when React came along. No one knows or cares about the whole stack. Training adapts to the market. Knowledge is lost. I got out before this. My new role since 2020 doesn’t go near the front end. I don’t know anything about React. I don’t know what the state of the art is on the front end. I have actually come to despise the “new” web. Alas so have our customers in recent years because the user interfaces are generally a lot less suited to LOB applications. Everything is too large, too generic, no visual cues, nothing works with the keyboard. Now everyone is building swathes of this stuff because LLMs can crank out new user interface fast. Our endpoints have multiplied, ROI has declined. I had a customer the other day say they wish we still distributed our Visual Basic application as it was much simpler and easier to use. That was a real eye opener for me. This is the asteroid we need to keep an eye on.

tonic_note 1mo ago
A huge aspect people miss about being a good FE is product sensibility. There is inherently some overlap between what an FE does and a designer does - think about how the product should behave. If you just hand the FE over to an LLM you will get the lowest common denominator UX. It will "get the job done" (hopefully) but it will never feel great to use, because figuring out what makes a product great to use request empathy, imagination, and experience, things that apathetic front ends lack. The AI can make an excellent frontend, but only if told what to do and what to look for. It will miss a ton of UX best practices unless explicitly prompted. This is why I find the contempt for frontend engineering so maddening. It's based on such a shallow understanding of what the job actually is. It's so much more than just "make it look pretty"

by sdcfgy 1mo ago

tonic_note 1mo ago

A huge aspect people miss about being a good FE is product sensibility. There is inherently some overlap between what an FE does and a designer does - think about how the product should behave. If you just hand the FE over to an LLM you will get the lowest common denominator UX. It will "get the job done" (hopefully) but it will never feel great to use, because figuring out what makes a product great to use request empathy, imagination, and experience, things that apathetic front ends lack. The AI can make an excellent frontend, but only if told what to do and what to look for. It will miss a ton of UX best practices unless explicitly prompted. This is why I find the contempt for frontend engineering so maddening. It's based on such a shallow understanding of what the job actually is. It's so much more than just "make it look pretty"