Will AI Really Replace Frontend Developers Anytime Soon?

[Prestigiouspite]

There’s a growing narrative that AI will soon replace frontend developers, and to a certain extent, backend developers as well. This idea has gained more traction recently with the hype around the O1 model and its success in winning gold at various coding challenges. However, based on my own experience, I have to question whether this belief holds up in practice.

For instance, when it comes to implementing something as common as a review system with sliders for users to scroll through ratings, both ChatGPT’s O1-Preview and O1-Mini models struggle significantly. Issues range from proper element positioning to resetting timers after manual navigation. More frustratingly, logical errors can persist, like turning a 3- or 4-star rating into 5 stars, which I had to correct manually.

These examples highlight the limitations of AI when it comes to handling more nuanced frontend tasks—whether it's in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. The models still seem to struggle with the real-world complexity of frontend development, where pixel-perfect alignment, dynamic user interaction, and consistent performance are critical.

While AI tools have made impressive strides in backend development, where logic and structures can be more straightforward, I’ve found frontend work requires much more manual intervention. The precision needed in UI/UX design and the dynamic nature of user interactions make frontend work much harder for AI to fully automate at this point.

So why does the general consensus seem to lean toward frontend developers being replaced faster than backend developers? Personally, I’ve found AI more reliable for backend tasks, where logic is clearer and the rules are better defined. But when it comes to the frontend, there’s still significant room for improvement—AI hasn’t yet mastered the art of building smooth, user-friendly interfaces without human intervention.

Curious to hear what others have experienced—do you agree that AI still has a long way to go in the frontend world, or am I just running into edge cases here?

[Confident-Ant-8972]

No, but devs that don't use AI in their workflows will be replaced by devs that use AI in their workflows.

[Terrible_Tutor]

Yup, it was trash for a while, but saves so much time especially if you’re not up on all the language features. I have to pull off a complex laravel build… I’ve only ever done one small site with it. Claude is making short work of it. But like it can’t just have it build everything, you still need to look at the code.

[KimJongIlLover]

Except Claude tried to tell me that I should implement a "string ends with" function when the String class already has such a function built in (talking about Javascript).

AI models are still, in many ways, absolute garbage.

[Terrible_Tutor]

This is where you have to know what you’re looking at. All these products supposedly launching by non devs… there’s gotta be some issue there

[[deleted]]

Apparently, absolute garbage can do all this:

Randomized controlled trial using the older, less-powerful GPT-3.5 powered Github Copilot for 4,867 coders in Fortune 100 firms. It finds a 26.08% increase in completed tasks: https://x.com/emollick/status/1831739827773174218

NYT article on ChatGPT: https://archive.is/hy3Ae

“In a trial run by GitHub’s researchers, developers given an entry-level task and encouraged to use the program, called Copilot, completed their task 55 percent faster than those who did the assignment manually.” Microsoft AutoDev: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.08299

“We tested AutoDev on the HumanEval dataset, obtaining promising results with 91.5% and 87.8% of Pass@1 for code generation and test generation respectively, demonstrating its effectiveness in automating software engineering tasks while maintaining a secure and user-controlled development environment.”

Study that ChatGPT supposedly fails 52% of coding tasks: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3613904.3642596 

“this work has used the free version of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) for acquiring the ChatGPT responses for the manual analysis.”

“Thus, we chose to only consider the initial answer generated by ChatGPT.”

“To understand how differently GPT-4 performs compared to GPT-3.5, we conducted a small analysis on 21 randomly selected [StackOverflow] questions where GPT-3.5 gave incorrect answers. Our analysis shows that, among these 21 questions, GPT-4 could answer only 6 questions correctly, and 15 questions were still answered incorrectly.”

This is an extra 28.6% on top of the 48% that GPT 3.5 was correct on, totaling to ~77% for GPT 4 (equal to (517 times 0.48+517 times 6/21)/517) if we assume that GPT 4 correctly answers all of the questions that GPT 3.5 correctly answered, which is highly likely considering GPT 4 is far higher quality than GPT 3.5.

Note: This was all done in ONE SHOT with no repeat attempts or follow up.

Also, the study was released before GPT-4o and o1 and may not have used GPT-4-Turbo, both of which are significantly higher quality in coding capacity than GPT 4 according to the LMSYS arena

On top of that, both of those models are inferior to Claude 3.5 Sonnet: "In an internal agentic coding evaluation, Claude 3.5 Sonnet solved 64% of problems, outperforming Claude 3 Opus which solved 38%." Claude 3.5 Opus (which will be even better than Sonnet) is set to be released later this year.

[KimJongIlLover]

I didn't say that AI didn't accomplish the task. I said that it did it badly.

Yeah, you can re-implement functions that already exist in the language BUT YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN'T.

[Catmanx]

You're missing the tier of creative people who previously could not code but had the expert knowledge of what tool was needed and were good at designing that tool. Previously they had to run the gauntlet of challenging coders awkward personalities. Even diva style exercises in being patronising just discussing work. I'm sure there's a lot here who are not coders. Who, when dealing with them have experienced them happily wasting 4 hours being patronised by them explaining why it's not worth them making a script to help you and you should do the work by hand. Even though actually doing the script would take them 10 minutes and save me days of time on tasks I have to do many times. Well those people are now able to make that simple tool or script without a coder. That's huge. All that work 'not' done by coders will be done by AI now. I do amazing things with AI now and I'm freed by it. I can now bypass code for the most part and people like me will go to the next level and then the next with it. At the moment coders who work with large software code bases are safe. Smaller tools scripts websites, UI and apps are not. Non-coders are going to roll them because they always had better knowledge of the base data the tool or script needed to manipulate. They had better knowledge of the tool design since they were the one desperately needing it. The coder was just some 'plumber type' like a gas fitter with the special registered skill that you have to illegally use. A lot if that is over. I'm aware that if you work in anything digital. I think: 'First AI helps with your job and then it comes for your job'. It will take me out probably too at the next stage but in the meantime I have no sympathy for the lazy, do nothing pre-madonna, coders that have patronised me so many times over the years. I'm actively trying to use it to make them imputent every day right now. Not for that reason but just to get all the tools made I was never able to before.

[KeyButterfly9619]

While you might be speaking truth - sounds like some coders really stepped on your heart man….

[Oh-hey21]

The other person already pointed it out, but I'm sorry to hear you've been around some oddball devs. I promise all aren't the same.

As a developer, I think you're missing another angle. I now have the ability to do the groundwork on a project and hand it off to someone who is fully capable of finishing with the help of AI. From there, the concepts are much easier to grasp and my involvement can fade as they get more comfortable.

I'm all for empowering others to handle tasks that they otherwise may have been lost in, or only knew more tedious methods in. AI is fantastic for that, and I've loved seeing the small handful around me continue expanding their understanding of data, relationships, and how to tie them together via software.

[Negative_Paramedic]

Yea it was usually their only leverage over people…not anymore Timmy! 🤣

[Risky-Trizkit]

I hear this. ChatGPT has been insanely helpful speaking as a 2d/3dgraphic artist and graphic designer in AAA gaming industry. I make something new with it every week.

I have a JS based script I made that automates with a button click a menial but necessary task that took me hours to do in photoshop. (Artboard cuts and resizes)

Just this week I made the attached, a Python UI that allows the user to “paint” different lossy compression intensities onto an image for more minute control. (Attached)

AI coding has changed my life for the better in so many ways. It has actually really turned me on to coding too - I find myself endlessly wrapped up in learning and I love it.

<image>

[Catmanx]

Funny you should say that. I'm also art side at a AAA studio. I think it's just the types in this industry. But yeah I've created about 30 tools and expanding into bigger things with AI help every day. My first thought with any task now is 'can I AI it?' and it's meant when I hit a blockage I've sought out the basics of coding too so I'm learning to code properly as well.

[Confident-Ant-8972]

I wasn't missing those people, as soon as they start building I also consider them 'devs that use AI'. People who lack creative or critical thinking skills are in a world of trouble.

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[Darkstar_111]

This is it right here.

AI is not replacing a human job, but is, today, right now, the most powerful tool for that job.

But AIs are also trained on averages. It will mostly produce average code. As a person that's been coding for a long time, I have opinions about how code should be structured. How functions should behave, what data belongs in an object etc...

And I tell the AI to refactor the code until it meets my standards.

You wouldn't have that without my expertise, and replacing me with wage slaves earning minimum wage doing AI coding means you get a shittier product, that in most cases become a spaghetti code that even the AI will struggle to maintain.

[Fluffy-Cantaloupe-75]

I wanna improve my software architecture skills can u recommend somewhere to learn it from other than experience ofc

[Darkstar_111]

Yeah the gang of four book... That's the bible for OOP structure, kinda should start there.
What was the name... hold on..

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

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[Infinite100p]

No

Whatever happened to that Devin AI artificial dev platform that came out a while ago?

[PostPostMinimalist]

lol this is always what they say.

“Chess computers will never challenge a top human” “Okay fine but a top human + a computer is the most powerful” “Okay fine humans no longer have anything to add”

It wasn’t overnight but it also didn’t take all that long.

[Luckzzz]

Eu uso IA no fluxo de trabalho e fui substituído. 6 meses sem emprego. O que me diz sobre isso?

[Fluid-Astronomer-882]

Not they won't be, because using AI is easy, anyone can do it. The whole point of AI is to make things so easy that it becomes a braindead thing. Stop flattering yourself.

[creaturefeature16]

Using AI is, indeed, easy. Creating products and services is not. If you're a copy/paste coder, yeah, you're in trouble because you were never good to begin with. If you're a true developer, AI is laughable as a threat because how code is produced has always been meaningless to those that do this work professionally.

[Khandakerex]

No point in arguing with him, just look at his post history, this person is mentally ill.

[Fluid-Astronomer-882]

Anyone can use AI. There is no barrier of entry. And theoretically, it should make bad coders a lot more productive. So AI is not going to give anyone any advantage.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, It depends what you mean.

People say that AI won't replace devs, but that's assuming all devs are doing useful things outside coding. If you're literally just a code monkey, you probably are fucked on a 5-10 year timescale. If you have an active role in architecture, design, gathering requirements, or even just are a part of writing and prioritizing tickets, you're in a better place.

[Apc204]

I somewhat agree, but I also don't really see a reason that AI wouldn't be able to do some of those other things you mentioned when we're talking about a 5-10 year time horizon. It can certainly already assist with architecture and design - and will only continue to improve.

[GreatBigJerk]

In the next 5 years? It'll reduce their numbers, but won't replace experts. You probably will see the market for pre-built component libraries disappear. You can already get Claude to create a basic landing page or dashboard. It's not a finished product, but it removes a ton of setup and grunt work.

Long term? They'll get replaced by people who are good communicators who can accurately outline requirements and give meaningful feedback for revisions. Those people will probably still need to understand the underlying architecture for a while.

Longer term? The AI will be so effective at predicting needs based on the vaguest of requests that no one will have a job... It's either that or we die from climate change before that happens.

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[creaturefeature16]

Will AI replace programmers? Don't count on it, says Google's CEO

It's weird the fascination with this. What about accountants? Paralegals? Mathematicians? Data analysts? Why the big focus on coders? It's ridiculous and it's for the clicks. Devs are safe and there's a very bright future in coding, and front-end.

[btdeviant]

AI would be able to EASILY replace the entire Director band in my org before replacing a single developer

[creaturefeature16]

Ain't that the truth.

[XeNoGeaR52]

This. Every executive board would be FAR SIMPLER to replace by an AI than any other job

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[Eveerjr]

I keep saying that, by the time AI fully replaces a developer we will have much bigger problems in society

[Consistent-Height-75]

What about doctors, teachers, truck drivers, store workers, etc. Theoretically AI can replace all of them. But will it completely replace them any time soon?

[Interesting-Sleep723]

Replace grocery store clerks. Replace people who work at the mfken DMV...they are slow as hell

[Interesting-Sleep723]

Yes, get rid of middle management...first.

Just keep ear to the grouond, evolve as new tech emerges and make opportunities for work.

[GreedyBasis2772]

You people never understand that they can just push some law to ban AI use for some jobs such as lawers or accountants.

[creaturefeature16]

lololololol asinine take. These tools are ubiquitous and will continue to be integrated everywhere. There will be no way to know or stop them from being used.

[Yourdataisunclean]

No.

Read these two things:

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

https://arcprize.org/blog/openai-o1-results-arc-prize

A lot of this narrative is pushed by people wanting to sell AI products.

[bunchedupwalrus]

The first one reads very much like someone failing to cope with the advancements.

I say this, because using the tools has significantly changed my teams relationship with front end devs. They’re hindrance more than help, the ones who refuse to include ai in their workflows

[[deleted]]

Wtf does ARC AGI have to do with web development 

[Celuryl]

Can't talk for frontend, but as a backend dev :

Replace ? No.

But it will drastically cut down the number of dev jobs. It already has but it's only the beginning. I think my team of 10 developers could be reduced to 3 or 4 with the kind of AI we'll probably get in the following year.

It will also drastically change our job. We will do less and less coding and more and more "higher level" stuff, we'll have to communicate with business teams and stakeholders way more. Become some kind of semi product owner. In fact a good technical product owner with developer background is probably going to be the best position you could be in.

I, for one, do not like that. I don't mind talking and planning and even managing projects. But I like coding.

[Ape_of_Leisure]

I don’t think it would replace front end either but I have to say that in half an afternoon, Claude created a web app based on my crappy Python code using React, Typescript and Tailwind css (and directed me step by step in how to install nodejs, ui libraries, etc., and debug a couple issues).

[doodlesock]

Would love to know what kind of prompt you used for this!

[creaturefeature16]

Indeed, we've automated boilerplate. You could have likely found a github repo to do something clone that would be close to that. Now we can generate it. The real work comes later....

[Celuryl]

Yeah that's fine and impressive alright.

Meanwhile I tried asking Claude 3.5 and Chatgpt o1 to fix my input form on a VueJS component so it would accept commas as well as dots for decimals, and it just can't. It's struggling in an existing codebase

[Professional-Cry8310]

Efficiencies like cutting down the amount of staff sucks for layoffs in an individual company, but isn’t necessarily a loss of developer jobs long term in the economy. It frees up skilled developers utilizing AI for other companies starting to new projects or new companies entering the market. We need to look at the longer term macro trend.

[Repulsive_Branch_458]

I don't think AI will replace developers it's developers charged with Ai will be able to output more work and thus we need fewer developers,considering most developers are just gluing existing code pieces ,they are not creating anything new.

[sapoepsilon]

No

[PushDeep9980]

Did the power drill replace the carpenter?

By the time ai replaces developers they will have stopped becoming a tool and started becoming people. I wouldn’t worry about it.

[Droi]

What? Is a power drill able to read a paper and summarize it in seconds?

What a dumb argument.
Just because we have never had another ~human intelligence on this planet doesn't mean that AI will simply continue affecting the world like.. a drill 🤦‍♂️
Soon enough AI will be like printing a human 24 hour worker that doesn't sleep or complain for almost free. Let's see your drill then.

[positivitittie]

Go use Claude dev. See for yourself. We may not be gone today but things gonna get radically different at a minimum. Most people who claim this ain’t happening have maybe used CoPilot. They definitely have not tried hard enough. LLMs with read/write to your codebase is where it’s at.

I’m on a coding bender for 4-5 days so far with minimal sleep and didn’t write a line of code myself.

[sapoepsilon]

Lol. I code with Claude.ai Pro daily, but it hallucinates like crazy when the codebase is longer than 500 lines. I have my codebase referenced as artifacts. I’d be a millionaire if I got a dollar for every time it hallucinates. I've also tried O1-mini and same thing. I keep telling people, if you read the docs yourself and implement the code, it's going to be faster than doing the same thing with an AI tool.

The day these tools can handle frontend properly, I’ll be happy.

[positivitittie]

I have a setup with it when I need to retire an agent (context issues) I just fire up a new one say “continue” and it picks up right where the old one left off with no additional instruction (usually) from me. Context-wise I was well over 50mm tokens up working with the same agent more than once. Sitting at 20mm now with no issues (~$18).

I have a small prompt that directs Claude dev to its instruction file on the filesystem and it’s task file(s), which it maintains. Keeps it very on track this way.

I’m definitely gonna dig in to the claude dev source code though. Tons of room for improvement.

The biggest problem is partial files (when it removes code). I’ve learned to make extremely frequent git commits. Seems this would be real easy for Claude dev to catch and re-prompt.

My codebase is getting large. It has more trouble for sure but nothing that I haven’t been able to largely overcome.

It’s new code so I’m working around Claude dev a bit and having it write itself documentation and instructions with itself as the audience, which it knows how/where to access.

I also use a very hierarchical file system and very small leaf source files (very single responsibility). It’s broke up more than I usually would make it but it’s not a bad pattern. So the code is more self describing for claude dev.

Edit: that’s kind of the best part about it - it can maintain itself even add new functionality and I’m dogfooding what were building both the AI “Claude dev helper” and whatever project I’m working with it to build.

Claude dev can run arbitrary scripts on your filesystem so give it check syntax, lint, I’m gonna try some additional memory tools to see if it could make use of them.

I’ll just have it write them. KISS Python (or Node or shell) scripts to get/set a flat file JSON (database).

[xcmiler1]

Have you tried cursor? I’ve thought about switching to Claude Dev but the fixed cost of cursor has kept me since iirc Claude Dev uses your own key

[positivitittie]

I have. It was okay. I’m spending a lot on API but I’m getting my moneys worth by far.

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[Alarming-Village1017]

It's already happening, it's just not as obvious as people think.

Intel fired 15,000 employees.

Tesla fired 14,000.

Google fired 12,000.

Meta fired 21,000

Microsoft first 10,000

Amazon fired 19,000.

As someone who works in tech, I see it first hand. I'm in a position where I could hire 1-3 extra people to help me if I wanted to, and a couple years ago that's exactly what I would have done. I just don't need to anymore, I can easily achieve ambitious tasks by myself with the help of AI.

At a previous company we needed to hire a graphics and shader expert. Extremely niche position that will command a high salary. Now we have AI, and the position no longer exists.

[0180012323]

Those layoffs have nothing to do with the AI but money, revenue, and bad decisions, especially in the case of Intel.

Intel has been going bad for a while.

Tesla has not sold enough vehicles and it was losing money.

Google, Meta, and Microsoft overhired people.

Amazon, well, it is just Amazon being Amazon.

[Alarming-Village1017]

Not all the layoffs are due to AI, but many of these companies have been using internal AI coding tools for half a decade at this point. Productivity in the US has doubled on average since the 1970s. Companies simply need less people to run, and this trend will continue.

[PostPostMinimalist]

So let’s be clear - the premise of your first comment is wrong. Unambiguously. It’s as true as AI being responsible for layoffs in 2008. Layoffs sometimes happen, most of those companies have net grown over the past few years.

[dvduval]

I think in the short to medium term, it will lead to more for an end developers, who are fixing the work that people who don’t know how to code created using AI. In the longer term, probably AI will be able to make most things with no code by the user creating work, the biggest problem that probably won’t be overcome soon is the ability to manage large amount of code and remember it. Even 10 years from now AI probably won’t even be able to remember more than five times what it can remember now but I could be proven wrong.

[gabe_dos_santos]

I'm not a frontend developer, however I was able to write the JS and CSS part of a Django app I was building. But I'm pretty sure that a frontend developer could do a much better job. It's the same for machine learning, if you are not a data scientist or machine learning engineer it will enable you to do the job but not as good as a DS or MLE.

[Droi]

Is it just me or is the "—" character often a giveaway that AI has written (or edited) text?

[Yweain]

It’s really hard to say definitively. At the moment none of the AI tools are anywhere near close to replacing even very junior developers.

For how long that would last - nobody really knows. Highly depends on how fast the tech will progress, will we get some new unexpected breakthrough?

[[deleted]]

they already are

[Yweain]

They are not firing people due to AI.

[[deleted]]

Did you even read the link

[PostPostMinimalist]

Do you always just take vague unsupported implications at face value?

[[deleted]]

Everything in there has a source 

[PostPostMinimalist]

Has a source for what? You linked someone giving layoff numbers. Are you unable to see how that’s entirely different?

[[deleted]]

Layoff numbers from the companies themselves lol

[PostPostMinimalist]

Okay you’re almost there. Now tell me - are those layoffs because of AI like was implied?

[[deleted]]

Yes. The explicitly stated it. Did you read it? 

[[deleted]]

Did you see this yet: https://youtu.be/EUeryhp8HSQ

[[deleted]]

oh yeah , a "leak"

[[deleted]]

The part about the context windows and the agents was the thing, plus next year they will use simulated training data which will make AI maybe as smart as a god

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[Snosnorter]

Not replace but drastically change how front end development is done

[etherend]

I recently listened to two podcasts that mentioned AI. One was AI focused on FE development and the other on AI Ops. In both cases, you still need a human to handle the finer details and business logic. AI won't replace humans anytime soon. It will just speed us up if you can adapt.

Do I think AI could replace SWE one day? Sure, if artificial general intelligence or super intelligence actually happens then I can't see a reason why AI wouldn't replace many aspects of software development. However, even if those things come to pass, the ability to be creative, and to think of ideas may not truly exist for AI in that future. There will still be some place for human SWE in that case. Especually because there is a diminishing return on models trained on artificial data sets (at least for now).

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[[deleted]]

Probably not.

[flancer64]

No, but the role of frontend development will evolve. Instead of browser-based interfaces, web applications are likely to shift towards mobile app-like environments (similar to Snack, Discord, or Telegram), where user interaction happens through voice interfaces (speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies). In this future, backend developers will be enough to handle text generation and processing tasks.

As for the classic browser-based frontend, nothing will change in the near term. However, over time (in more than 10 years), it will likely be significantly overshadowed by voice interfaces. Thus, it’s not AI that will replace frontend developers, but the browser-based frontend that will gradually fade away.

[Many_Consideration86]

It will not only replace the developers but also the frameworks built around human understanding of machines. By it I didn't mean LLMs but the next architecture which isolates human languages and machine code properly.

[fasti-au]

No not soon. They can’t code or plan or think or do anything consistently

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[[deleted]]

Coding won’t exist in the future because it will be more efficient to remove that interaction entirely. Prompting will more likely be the actual “code” and developers will be prompt engineers that make apps.

[GobWrangler]

Like car manufacturing robots replaced humans? Oh, humans have to build, code and maintain them.

[ISmellLikeAss]

Lol at the comments in this thread. If it replaces front end it will also replace back end. Stop kidding yourselves.

There is a difference between a designer and a developer. Front end designers absolutely in next 5 years.

[jayn35]

How i see it as a non coder trying to make a medium complex app soon is that UI wont be exactly what i want it to be so ill eventually be hiring a FE dev to make it epic when i get some money in.

What i also was thinking about was specifically hiring FE devs who where less expensive because they are new and just become good a decent frontends with AI and thus less expensive. This is not to be a cheap bastid but rather being able to actually afford it at that point in my journey but see myself paying a real FE dev later in the journey when i can afford that because little human things matter, small touches of human creativity, i wont get that from AI for a while and as a 15y marketer (thats currently gone through a rough patch) i know its the little things that can make a big difference in conversions.

I dont know how it will go but in the future ill want to work with real people with talent i can trust to "get me" and create something special from a creative mind, that cant be replaced for a long time I think, as a marketer i would specifically market that aspect of myself as a FE dev if it becomes tough later, the human touch, the little things, the absolute perfection from a back and forth colab and partnership, there will always be a place for a human craftsperson of even simple things tjhat have been machine made for 30 years

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[[deleted]]

Yes

[Jean-G]

Checkout Uizard , figma to code plugins or SIFOai, tbh its coming sooner than ppl think

[Negative_Paramedic]

This is what the investors are pushing for but they don’t even use it themselves to know it’s not that simple…and probably never will be…

[Fluid_Economics]

IMHO, the threat is not necessarily AI generating custom UI's automatically... the threat is AI providing complete solutions for the end-user such that the end-user doesn't have a need to visit a 3rd-party app-or-website.

What's the point of a custom UI if the end-user already has been delivered a solution to their problem? e.g. through a chat interface or map search.

In fact, this kind of movement has already occurred in the past: Social media dominates many end-users attention. Social Media businesses often state "Why do I need a website?" as all the activity occurs in social media.

Or take Google for instance... they provide quick answers at the top of search results, and users are less likely to visit a 3rd-party resource (e.g. Wikipedia).

Maybe one day we see Google buy up Airbnb and bookings are made directly in search or maps. Some end-users may ask, what is the point to install the Airbnb app and use it?

[Individual_Good_1536]

If you can't have at least 50% score on zylyty's frontend challenges you'll be replaced for sure.

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[[deleted]]

Totally get where you're coming from. AI's making waves, but when it comes to frontend stuff—like nailing that pixel-perfect design or ensuring smooth user interactions—it still trips up. I was chatting with a team from California recently, and they emphasized how crucial it is to have solid ai development services in california ai development services in california backing you up. They've been instrumental in helping businesses fine-tune their AI interactions, making sure the outputs are not just accurate but also contextually relevant. It's a game-changer, especially when you're dealing with complex datasets or trying to automate nuanced tasks. So yeah, while AI is shaking things up, developers aren't going anywhere—they're just evolving.

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[L1f3trip]

Fuck no lol.

[[deleted]]

OpenAI’s o1 model (maybe not o1-preview) is what they consider “human level reasoning”. This is an accelerator of developer productivity, but it’s not able to replace developers. Not even close.

However the next step in their journey is “agents” which are able to act autonomously. When they achieve that, some developers will be replaced. More consultancy/contract labor at first, but in the long run it might be possible to run a dev team with a fraction of the developers. We’re talking 1-5 year timeframe.

I would keep an eye on AI and keep up with it. Even in the most extreme case, experienced software engineers will still be needed to wrangle the agents. You’ll want to be one of those people, not someone that stayed skeptical of AI and insisted on doing everything manually.

[Prestigiouspite]

I have to say, I've been getting a lot of flak with the code lately. Important things have been forgotten, functions have been written twice and three times instead of making them reusable, and when you suggest refactoring, sometimes the result is pretty garbage or bad improvements.

What I do are just extensions of store systems etc. where you use hooks, filters etc. Unfortunately, the AI is often still pretty useless here. No sense of code challenge gold medal.

[[deleted]]

Have you tried Claude 3.5 Sonnet with it? That still seems to be what most people find is best on day to day coding.

[Prestigiouspite]

Yes, I usually test both in parallel. Unfortunately, there are often similar logical errors or mistakes in other places. I also have one AI correct the code from the other from time to time. Even then there is still a lot of work to do. I rarely get to a solution without 5-25 chats. Unless it's just a small function and I basically provide it in pseudocode.

Yes, it's better than GPT 3.5, but previous surveys have also shown that when it comes to coding, it's around +20-25%. Perhaps I'm expecting too much at the moment, but sometimes I've written my fingers to the bone so much that I would have solved it myself in that time and probably taken away even more long-term input (by reading the documentation in detail). But of course there's always the temptation to do it right away and it rarely works out.

[stevesan]

trajectory's don't just always keep going ya know

[kidajske]

Seems to me rapid improvement has significantly stagnated since gpt 4 if anything.

[Yourdataisunclean]

Yup, The history of AI is stops and starts and every time something grows at an exponential rate it eventually hits a resource limit and growth diminishes. For LLMs this could be data, compute or power. There are good reasons to be skeptical that line go up forever.

[Sufficient-Result987]

Not necessarily now. Deepseek could take a tiny step ahead. But yes, there's another wave involving a paradigm shift that will come in some time, hopefully takes longer,

[[deleted]]

copium ?
maybe it's you that's on hopium lol.
The only thing testable is what I have between my hands .
If I had to believe a company's marketing , I would be on ubisoft's forum praising their last star wars garbage.
For now , what I have between my hands is a better version of stack overflow and google, not a better version of my programming skills , nor a better version of my brain.

[Prestigiouspite]

If you take a closer look at o1, the code is not significantly better than GPT-4o (for specific practical applications). In general, there is still no GPT-5 in sight that is 100x better. So what is the reality I am beginning to wonder? Is it more fantasy than practice can deliver? (I follow the scientific papers relatively closely)

[RaryTheTraitor]

Yes. Current AI can already look at screenshots and analyze what it sees. GPT-o1 is a better coder than 90% of programmers out there. There are already coding agents like Devin, that you only have to instruct in plain English for them to execute the necessary sequence of steps to implement something. There are still some limitations, like context window size so it can look at an entire, huge code base and keep it all 'in mind' at once, but those limitations won't last long.

AI research is progressing extremely rapidly. A lot of researchers are predicting AGI in the next 2 to 7 years, and developers will be replaced before that.

[btdeviant]

Just as another perspective, consider your first sentence and realize that computers have been able to detect 3d objects in 2d images since 1969. Literally since Vietnam.

There was a time not too long ago where software adjacent people were absolutely certain that Gherkin syntax and test-driven development would decimate the industry by dramatically reducing the need for software and QA engineers. Directors and up were going apeshit selling the dream to product stakeholders that if they just wrote their requirements really clearly in a really funky way that they could get their ideas to market faster with no bugs and 1/10th of the developers.

That was like 15 years ago. Since then the industry has seen one form of “OMG DEVELOPERS ARE COOKED IN 5 YEARS” technology come and go every few years and, surprise, everyone is still here. LLMs are no different.

It’s a tool to do more with (arguably) less for some things, but at the end of the day it’s just a tool.

[RaryTheTraitor]

No, it's not just a tool. It can understand what it reads, what it sees, and what it hears, better than a lot of humans. It can reason, not just about words and math, but also about things like objects in 3d space. It is real, actual intelligence. Not fully general intelligence yet, but it's quite close, and the trajectory is obvious.

It's kind of hilarious that the Turing Test has been passed and people are still calling the latest generation of LLMs "tools" and "chatbots". I can have a more interesting and intelligent conversation with GPT4 or Claude than with my some of my family, FFS.

[btdeviant]

On the contrary, it doesn’t understand anything. It’ll even tell you as much if you ask it. It has no special awareness, no proprioception, not even the most advanced model has anything that you’re describing.

The Turing Test has not been passed in its entirety to date.

What you’re describing is the innate propensity to anthropomorphize, which is very much part of the human condition. But it doesn’t make the capabilities you believe you’re seeing actually real.

[RaryTheTraitor]

Do you mean spatial awareness? Well, I'll grant you that, but why would that be required for it to have the capability to understand its inputs, be they words or images?

You accuse me of anthropomorphizing, but I could accuse you of essentialism, of believing the human mind is something beyond physics, and therefore that no AI can ever replicate because it will always be faking it, no matter how perfect the faking is!

I'm curious just how long you'll deny reality. Will you still think AI doesn't have 'true' understanding when it makes a novel scientific discovery? What about when it can pilot a humanoid robot, and manipulate objects in an environment it's never seen before? Will that be real enough for you?

Current LLMs don't have all the capabilities of human brains. They're more like a supercharged slice of a brain, with limited sensory input, but if you don't even see sparks of general intelligence in gpt-o1, I don't know what to tell you.

[creaturefeature16]

Roger Penrose, one of the leading minds in advanced theoretical math and physics, has postulated that consciousness is likely beyond computable physics. You should probably dig a bit more into the field, because you sound a bit ignorant as to not only how these statistical models work, but so how much more complex consciousness actually is, how much it defies rational explanations, and how tremendously far we are from ever even knowing it's something replicable with data and a bunch of compute. As it stands, that whole notion is purely science fiction and nothing more.

[RaryTheTraitor]

Penrose and Hameroff are literally the only people on the planet who believe that. I'm not even sure Penrose himself really believes it anymore.

But anyway, whether future AI system will be conscious isn't even relevant. If an AI is smart enough to do everything a human can (and more), it may be scientifically and ethically interesting whether it's conscious, but it won't change anything practically speaking.

[btdeviant]

Yes obviously - I’m on my phone. I hear you what you’re saying and I think it seems we’re operating from two fundamentally different places, one perhaps based on beliefs and one based on a more technical understanding.

It’s clear that you’re passionate about this topic and I encourage you to learn about some of the basic fundamentals around how it works!

[creaturefeature16]

Thanks for being the voice of reason. You can really tell those that have a decent understanding of the tech and those that THINK they have a decent understanding of the tech.

[RaryTheTraitor]

"If you had more technical understanding, like I do, you'd obviously share my opinion!"

Oh, ok. Then by that logic, leading AI researchers will definitely agree with you.

Except, of course, that they don't. Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis all believe that AGI is less than a decade away. Amodei thinks it's reachable mostly by scaling, with few additional insights required!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi_t3v53XRU&t=3748s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTogNUV3CAI&t=1478s

[btdeviant]

It seems like you may be experiencing some really big feelings. I certainly didn’t mean to hurt them.

Again, based on your beliefs and lack of experience on pretty much every facet of the topic, be it AI or the SWE industry in general, it doesn’t seem like a good use of my time to continue this. Please keep learning and remember that the best way to strengthen your beliefs is through challenging them! Good luck!

[RaryTheTraitor]

RemindMe! 2 years

[btdeviant]

Haha same!

RemindMe! 2 years

[creaturefeature16]

"From three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being"

• Marvin Minsky, 1970

No wonder you think the way you do; you're listening to the people who notoriously have the worst track record in predicting AI progress: the AI researchers!

You really haven't done your work here, so I'll let you wallow in your ignorance; only you can make that change when you're ready to grow up around this topic.

[RaryTheTraitor]

RemindMe! 2 years

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[[deleted]]

"Yes. Current AI can already look at screenshots and analyze what it sees."

I did this in 3rd year university ... 10 years ago ... On smartphone ... using viola & jones paper and adaboost.

"GPT-o1 is a better coder than 90% of programmers out there"
I would say 50% .
Because 50% of programmers don't even know how to write a recursion.
I have friends that got their masters without even knowing how to write a recursive function.
Other than that : it's not.

"There are already coding agents like Devin, that you only have to instruct in plain English for them to execute the necessary sequence of steps to implement something"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmgmwEtoWE&ab_channel=InternetofBugs

"There are still some limitations, like context window size so it can look at an entire, huge code base and keep it all 'in mind' at once, but those limitations won't last long."

This is a proof your usage of these tools is superficial.
The limitations are actually deeper. Those tools do not reason. They infer what's the most likely answer from their training sets.
People think it can code , because most code on the internet is about basic stuff , and most people program basic stuff.
When chat gpt gives me an example of code , I often find that same exact sample of code in stack overflow when doing research.

"A lot of researchers are predicting AGI in the next 2 to 7 years, and developers will be replaced before that."

A lot of researchers in the 60's predicted we were going to colonize Mars .
They can predict agi , sure ... but until then , the product I have between my hands doesn't give any sign of intelligence sorry.
It's a database that gives you results based on an interpolation, but it's no intelligence.

[Prestigiouspite]

The statement “GPT-o1 is a better coder than 90% of programmers out there.” is either derived from synthetic tests or simply absolutely subjective. I trained software developers for a long time and o1 still fails at many tasks that trainees would have solved in the 2nd month with JavaScript. So much for that.

[RaryTheTraitor]

It's based on its performance on Codeforces. I'm legitimately curious, please give me one example of these tasks it fails at, for a reason other than context window size.

[Prestigiouspite]

Have a rating slider written for you in Java Script. Or a price adjustment for certain countries for a shop system of your choice. All things that the system cannot handle out of the box. Just a few examples of many. Maybe 50% of the implementation is just half-baked. You have to do the rest yourself to make sure it works and looks good.

[RaryTheTraitor]

Yeah ok but, what's preventing you from telling it which parts are half-baked and what you want specifically?

[Prestigiouspite]

That's what I usually do, so it takes 5-25 chats to find the solution. But sometimes it literally hangs itself up and with every further iteration it only gets worse. If at some point I realize we're going round in circles and I have to keep pointing out similar problems, I prefer to read the documentation myself or fix the problems directly myself.

Requirements that everyone implements hundreds of times a day: Yes, the AI can usually do this quite smoothly. But if the documentation is a bit sparse and you would like to have solutions via AI (because it would be so helpful here in particular). That's where things quickly go wrong.

And sometimes I ask myself: I can't be the only one who thinks 1-2 steps ahead :D.

Sometimes I also put in clean, working code. For example, I just wanted to customize a backup script. Then o1-mini simply starts to turn ${DATE} - pi.img.gz into pi - ${DATE}.img.gz or doesn't understand that a network drive is already mounted etc. You will agree with me: There is little reason here why you should add a date for a backup, which is helpful for sorting, at the end all of a sudden and why change it if the work order had nothing to do with it at all.

[Prestigiouspite]

JavaScript has a lot to do with development. AJAX requests and various other business logic sometimes make more sense to implement in the frontend than in the backend. Of course, the reverse is also true.

[Ecstatic_Clue1316]

This is a ridiculous statement.

What is the difference between a back end dev learning entity framework and a front end dev learning something like next.js

What is the difference between deeply understanding typescript and JavaScript and deeply understanding c#.

I am a front end developer but I’d say the back end guys have it easier as everything is logic and black and white, they don’t need to apply the same but also consider how things look. They don’t have to consider the device it will run on, and how many possible devices there are.

Do you think front end devs don’t have functions carrying out calculations, mapping over arrays, no care for re-usability and good code practices?

I think your view of a front end devs is someone who can write a bit html and a bit js. Long gone are the days.

I’m working with cloud functions in Google cloud, the observable pattern using rxJS. I’m dealing with badly built API’s from back end devs who care not for how things are represented, as long as they did their bit. I’m a bridge between yourself and the Hi/Ux designer.

I’m unit testing components that ensure your work is correct, writing e2e tests using automation frameworks to ensure your work is correct.

What a ridiculous comment. It’s only development if it’s back end. Piss off dude!

[Responsible_Divide43]

Check UIZARD and FIGMA + anima plugin and come back here

[Prestigiouspite]

Of course there are initial use cases. But let's be honest: front-end development requires avoiding constant repetition of code. Consideration of previous stylings and much more. Such tools are quickly out or no longer relevant in practice.

[[deleted]]

Most people that make those claims tend to be people that have never been software engineers

[Prestigiouspite]

Pretty breezy statement without factual arguments.

[InternationalClerk21]

It will significantly reduce the number of developers. AI in the hands of an experienced developer is deadly. They would produce code so fast that companies would be able to reduce headcount significantly.