alt Hacker NewsWeb development is fun again
Comments
This is exactly how I feel about it. The cognitive load of starting a new project is so small now. It's also made it very easy to switch between projects, something that took way too much headspace to do on a whim in the before times.
This sounds like the opposite of fun to me.
I really agree with this. For me it just feel so much more fun and rewarding to build my weekend projects, especially those projects where I just want to produce and deploy a working mvp out of an idea. If trying out a new framework or whatever I find it quite the opposite though, that AI removes all the fun parts of learning (obviously)
Been using GitHub Copilot to handle the tedious webpack/babel config files and it's a game changer for modern web dev. No more spending hours debugging build pipeline issues - it generates 90% correct configs that just need minor tweaks.
Agree, I developed a 150K line stock analytics Saas that started with the will to provide my son with some tools to analyse stocks.
I enjoyed this experience of CLI coding so much that I developed Market Sentiment parsing 300,000 business articles and news daily, a dividend based strategy with calendar of payouts and AI optimised strategies to extract every drop of interest, an alert system for a strategy you backtested in the playground and its key triggers are tracked automatically so you can react, an ETF risk analysis model with external factors, all quant graphs and then some, time models with Markov, candlestick patterns, Monte Carlo simulation, walk forward and other approaches I had learned over the years. There is much more.
I know you don't measure a project in terms of lines of code, but these are optimised, verified, tested, debugged and deployed. There are so much features, because I was having fun and got carried away. I'm semi-retired and this is like having my web agency back again.
I used to program in GRASP... I have a data scientist certification, did a lot of Python, Machine Learning, NLP, etc. I really enjoy the prompt based development process as it seems like you are reaching the right resource for your question from a staff of experienced dev. Of course you need to check everything as a junior dev always creeps in when you least expect it. Especially for security. Discuss best practices often and do your research on touchy subjects. Compare various AI on the same topic. GROK has really caught up. OpenAI has slowed down. CLAUDE is simply amazing. This AI thing is work in progress and constantly changing.
I have a noticed an amazing progression over the past year. I have a feeling their models are retrained, tweaked on our interactions even if you asked for them not to use the data. The temptation is too high and the payoffs abound in this market for the best AI tools.
I'm building a code factory now with agents and key checkpoints for every step. I want to remove human intervention from multiple sub steps that are time consuming so I can be even more productive in 2026...
Strong agree! Forget all those studies that say “but developers are slower” or whatever — I’m actually building way more hobby projects and having way more fun now. And work is way more fun and easier. And my node_modules folder size is dropping like crazy!
One thing is true: now I go to the bar with the other guys in the group, drink whatever and let Claude or Codex do the work while I supervise, then merge PR in the morning... I wish I was kidding, but for non critical projects this is now a reality
What are we all using as assistants? I tend to copy-paste my code into Gemini. I tried some VS-code assistants, but I can't get them to do the thing I want (like look at selected text or only do small things)...
Strong agree. The modern web world is clearly better but we traded a whole lot of complexity for a little bit of benefit (and frequently regressed on speed). The microservices and javascript framework wars were the dark ages.
it is fun again because we can remove ourselves completely from it? seems like web enthusiast are always the first to drop ship huh. "llms good because I no longer have to interface with this steaming pile of shit that web development has become", not because the web ecosystem has improved by any metric.
It sounds like a first april entry.
Things such as:
"They’re far from perfect, but claude and codex gave me the leverage I desperately needed."
Yikes. I most definitely don't want AI to take away abilities.
I do kind of approach web development differently. Rather than static HTML and CSS for the most part (which I, of course, also use), ruby acts as primary wrapper and I treat HTML tags like objects as well as everything else. So I kind of describe a web page on a (one level higher) layer. It is not 100% perfect as some things are messy (also due to legacy, some of the code I started writing 20 years ago, updated some of it but other parts need to be upated too, which is only possible when time permits); but even with this in mind, I simply could never go back to using the web with HTML and CSS as a primary means to describe web-related content. It would just be very inefficient use of my time.
> When AI generates code, I know when it’s good and when it’s not.
Ok - now I know this is a first april entry indeed.
> There’s mental space for creativity in building software again.
Which, of course, would not make any sense. Now the article is a first april entry, but if we were to assume he would write this for real, why would AI have taken away creativity? People can still think on their own. In theory they could have the great ideas - and AI autogenerates all necessary code. So this use case would not be that terrible IF it were to work perfectly well. I don't see it work that way right now. AI often just is a mega-spammer everywhere. It spams out crap, some of which is useful, but the default is crap.
> AI really has made web development fun again.
Not really. But I also think that the whole web-stack should be simplified and streamlined. Instead what I see is the opposite happening. Complexity rises. And JavaScript sucks so much it is really unbearable. You can do many useful things in JavaScript, but as a language it is a true clown language. I used to think I dislike PHP the most, but I no longer use PHP yet I have to use JavaScript. Every second line of code I ask myself why this joke could have ever become popular. Even Java evolved and got better. JavaScript appears to have gotten more stupid over the years.
Really like using alpine with a classical JS server rendered stack too. Most crud apps don’t need a spa app and now you are working out of one code base again. Codex chews through this kind of code
More related to the title, i've found the same.
I was always an aggressive pixel-pusher, so web dev took me AGES.
But with shadcn + llms I'm flying through stuff, no lie, 5-20x faster than I was before.
And i dont hate it anymore
God created men, ~~Colt~~ LLMs made them equal...
I spent probably 150-200 hours coding a money management tool in 2022.
This evening, I worked with Claude to make an AI-assisted money manager that is better than the 2022 version I so carefully crafted.
I had nothing at all this morning and now I have a full database with all my transactions and really strong reporting.
The word “developer” is about to get a lot more expansive and I think that’s cool.
yeah, I think that too - for me the -Ofun comes from HTMX https://htmx.org and the HARC stack https://harcstack.org so I can server side code in a my preferred programming language hint: not JS (with a helping of LLM on the side)
Couldn’t agree more.
Changing anything in oUR react Bootstrap frontend was a visit to the dentist.
But Llms really lowered the pain.
Of course its fun. Making slop _is_ very fun. Its a low-effort dopamine-driven way of producing things. Learning is uncomfortable. Improving things using only your braincells can be very difficult and time consuming.
If you have front-end and back-end separate, you're doing web development wrong.
Exactly. AI freed me from the boring character by character toiling
> On the frontend, you have build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images… I remember when the biggest challenge was IE6 compatibility.
I know which I'd choose. In my experience of the IE6 era, tooling was atrocious, and most (all?) cross-browser testing was manual. Varying box models and no devtools? Give me npm framework churn and layers of transpilation any day.
I personally don't find using LLMs "fun" but I do like this article for one simple reason. It points out that most contemporary frameworks for web are forms of slop and I don't think you should feel bad using an LLM to generate slop code and config to deal with it.
Fun is the way, not the destiny
> I’m easily 10x more productive with AI than without it.
So you've shipped 10x the products? Can you list them?
AI has increased my productivity in dealing with side tasks in languages/frameworks I'm not familiar with. But it has not made development fun. To the contrary, I enjoy writing code, not reviewing code.
Not the first time I can't access a link posted here due being blocked in Spain.
I hate the fact that modern webdev has become to unnecessarily complex that developers unironically turn to LLMs instead of realising that it doesn't have to be like this.
What to keep an eye on is noscript/basic (x)html interoperability, namely a web site, not a web app.
With a web site and not a web app, you are not dependent on the whatng cartel web engines, in other words, the door is kept opened for small and alternative _real life_ noscript/basic (x)html web engines/browsers (with CSS renderer or not).
Ofc, you can have a web app and a web site side by side, usually the web app is built upon the web site.
In the end, if we are all honnest with ourself, 99% of the time spent on an online service is keeping it available and safe, 1% will be its actual development.
I'm starting to resent the feeling of reading a cool article and for the conclusion to always be AI.
> I remember when PHP 4 was a thing. jQuery was new and shiny. Sites were built with tables, not divs. Dreamweaver felt like a life hack. Designs were sliced in Photoshop. Databases lived in phpMyAdmin.
> It probably didn’t feel like it at the time, but looking back, those were simpler days.
jQuery was bloat, there were others like MooTools. People idealize tables but it was not just grid, it was often used as hacks as well, like weird offsets, etc. Dreamweaver produced mess. Sliced designs? "This site is optimized for 800x600"
Not saying current state is good. I just find interesting how nostalgia can distort memories even in tech.
Turbo C++ Vibe
> As a solo developer, you could manage everything. From idea to execution. Or at least, it felt that way
It's still that way with Rails. Probably other stacks. Sad that the default nowadays is so unproductive that solo devs don't think they can do things.
Web development may be fun again but you aren’t developing. You order and became a customer.
Maybe you can distinguish good code from bad code but how long will you check it? Auditing wasn’t the fun part ever.
And I bet at some point you will recognize a missing feeling of accomplishment because you didn’t figure out the how, you just ordered the what.
We wouldn’t call someone a painter who let AI do the painting.
To me it seems like for OP development was a means towards an end. The act to developing software as a craft does not seem to be of importance to him while the output is. His post is full of references to productivity and lacking references of improving his skills (as opposed to using LLMs as a crutch) or getting better at writing software. I bet OP would be equally happy if he had AGI that would write everything for him.
For many in HN, programming is an end in itself and they would not be happy giving that up just because it makes you finish quicker.
This is probably the best post i've seen about the whole LLM / vibe coding space at least in relation to web dev. Indeed, as the author states, the code / agent often needs some coralling, but if you know all the gotchyas / things to look for, you can focus 100% on the creativity part! Been loving it as well.
Agree with this. Like the author, I've been keeping ajour with web development for multiple decades now. If you have deep software knowledge pre-LLM, you are equipped with the intuition and knowledge to judge the output. You can tell the difference between good and bad, if it looks and works the way you want, and you can ask the relevant questions to push the solution to the actual thing that you envisioned in your mind.
Without prior software dev experience people may take what the LLM gives them at face value, and that's where the slop comes from imho.
> Clicks, expecting some new spec or framework that actually made web dev fun again
> Looks inside
> "AI has entered the chat"
What did I even expect. I wonder how many clickbait posts of this type are gonna make the HN front page.
When stuff was getting too complicated, I looked for ways to make things simpler.
Developers have spent decades trying to figure out ways to make things simpler, less code the better, only to throw it all out the window because chatbot go brrrrrr.
I feel u!
Web development is perhaps "fun" again if you consider PHP 4 and jQuery as "fun". A "problem" arises for those of us who prefer Ruby, Rails, and HotWire.
I'm not gonna lie, I use AI every day (in the form of Grammarly). But LLMs and so-called "agents" are less valuable to me, even if they would help me to produce more "output".
It will be interesting to me to discover the outcome of this bifurcation!
I remember when Hacker News felt smaller. Threads were shorter. Context fit in your head. You could read the linked article, skim the comments, and jump in without feeling like you’d missed a prerequisite course.
It probably didn’t feel special at the time, but looking back, it was simpler. The entire conversation space was manageable. If you had a thought, you could express it clearly, hit “reply,” and reasonably expect to be understood.
As a single commenter, you could hold the whole discussion in your mind. From article to argument to conclusion. Or at least, it felt that way.
I’m probably romanticizing it—but you know what I mean.
Now, articles are denser. Domains are deeper. Threads splinter instantly. Someone cites a paper, someone else links a counter-paper, a third person references a decades-old mailing list post, and suddenly the discussion assumes years of background you may or may not have.
You’re expected to know the state of the art, the historical context, the common rebuttals, the terminology, and the unwritten norms—while also being concise, charitable, and original.
Every field has matured—probably for the better—but it demands deeper domain knowledge just to participate without embarrassing yourself. Over time, I found myself backing out of threads I was genuinely interested in, not because I had nothing to say, but because the cognitive load felt too high. As a solo thinker, it became harder to keep up.
> AI has entered the chat.
They’re far from perfect, but tools like Claude and ChatGPT gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time: _leverage_.
I can now quickly:
- Summarize long articles - Recall prior art - Check whether a take is naïve or already debunked - Clarify my own thinking before posting
Suddenly, the background complexity matters a lot less. I can go from “half-formed intuition” to “coherent comment” in minutes instead of abandoning the tab entirely. I can re-enter conversations I would’ve previously skipped.
> Oh no, you’re outsourcing thinking—bet it’s all slop!
Over the years, I’ve read thousands of great HN comments. Thoughtful ones. Careful ones. People who knew when to hedge, when to cite, when to shut up. That pattern is in my head now.
With AI, I can lean on that experience. I can sanity-check tone. I can ask, “Is this fair?” or “What am I missing?” I can stress-test an argument before I inflict it on strangers.
When AI suggests something wrong, I know it’s wrong. When it’s good, I recognize why. Iteration is fast. Even with back-and-forth refinement, I’m dramatically more effective at expressing what I already think.
The goal hasn’t changed: contribute something useful to the discussion. The bar is still high. But now I have a ladder instead of a sheer wall.
There’s mental space for curiosity again. My head isn’t constantly overloaded with “did I miss context?”, “is this a known bad take?”, or “will this derail into pedantry?” I can offload that checking to AI and focus on the _idea_.
That leaves room to explore. To ask better questions. To write comments that connect ideas instead of defensively hedging every sentence. To participate for the joy of thinking in public again.
It was never about typing comments fast, or winning arguments. It was about engaging with interesting people on interesting problems. Writing was just the interface.
And with today’s tools, that interface is finally lighter again. AI really has made commenting on Hacker News fun again.
>>Starting a new project once felt insurmountable. Now, it feels realistic again.
Honestly, this does not give me confidence in anything else you said. If you can't spin up a new project on your own in a few minutes, you may not be equipped to deal with or debug whatever AI spins up for you.
>>When AI generates code, I know when it’s good and when it’s not. I’v seen the good and the bad, and I can iterate from there. Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive
Minus a baseline, it's hard to tell what this means. 10x nothing is nothing. How am I supposed to know what 1x is for you, is there a 1x site I can look at to understand what 10x would mean? My overall feeling prior to reading this was "I should hire this guy", and after reading it my overwhelming thought was "eat a dick, you sociopathic self-aggrandizing tool." Moreover, if you have skill which you feel is augmented by these tools, then you may want to lean more heavily on that skill now if you think that the tool itself makes everyone capable of writing the same amazing code you do. Because it sounds like you will be unemployed soon if not already, as a casualty of the nonsense engine you're blogging about and touting.
Even with AI, web development is not fun. Web development was fun while the web was the wild west, and the rent-seekers hadn't gotten their hooks into it. These days you're likely to be delisted from Google because your site isn't responsive, or there's a 500 on a page or two. And then, for your patience and dedication, you get sued by a scummy lawyer who looks for sites with poor WCAG conformance. Congratulations!
>On the frontend, you have build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images... I remember when the biggest challenge was IE6 compatibility.
It is not necessary to do this. Server-side rendering is still a thing.
I still do a lot of my side projects in ruby on rails, which is maybe not fashionable these days but:
- no heavy js means speedy first paint
- I just use normal minified css, no sass or other junk
- partials means navigation is snappy
Plus it containerizes nicely.