I wanted to believe this article, but the writing is difficult to follow, and the thread even harder. My main issue is the contradiction about frameworks and using what the large tech companies have built vs real engineering.

The author seems to think that coding agents and frameworks are mutually exclusive. The draw of Vercel/next.js/iOS/React/Firebase is allowing engineers to ship. You create a repo, point to it, and boom! instant CICD, instant delivery to customers in seconds. This is what you're complaining about!? You're moaning that it took 1 click to get this for free!? Do you have any idea how long it would take to setup just the CI part on Jenkins just a few years ago? Where are you going to host that thing? On your Mac mini?

There's a distinction between frameworks and libraries. Frameworks exist to make the entire development lifecycle easier. Libraries are for getting certain things that are better than you (encryption, networking, storage, sound, etc.) A framework like Next.js or React or iOS/macOS exist because they did the heavy work of building things that need to already exist when building an application. Not making use of it because you want to perform "real engineering" is not engineering at all, that's just called tinkering and shipping nothing.

Mixing coding agents with whatever framework or platform to get you the fastest shipping speed should be your #1 priority. Get that application out. Get that first paid customer. And if you achieve a million customers and your stuff is having scaling difficulties, then you already have teams of engineers to work on bringing some of this stuff in house like moving away from Firebase/Vercel etc. Until then, do what lets you ship ASAP.