Will "A.I." drastically change Web development?

Fletcher — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 03:45:28 +0000

The buzzwords for 2023 have definitely been "AI" & "ChatGPT". There seems to be a lot of fear circulating within the web development community. The disruption and unknown effects of AI have yet to be fully realized.

I, at first, was super skeptical and fearful as someone eager to start a career in front-end & web development. When I initially saw that ChatGPT4 created a website from a hand drawn sketch, I was concerned and also amazed. However, I beginning to adopt the mindset that AI should be used as another tool in your tool belt to increase productivity and enhance your workflow. While, AI can generate code at light speed, and debug, it isn't the best at understanding software requirements ( so I have read). After all, we develop software and websites for human use.

I think Language Learning Models are extremely fascinating. I understand how they work at a very basic level.

Even the openly licensed ones are still the world’s most convoluted black boxes. We continue to have very little idea what they can do, how exactly they work and how best to control them.
I’m used to programming where the computer does exactly what I tell it to do. Prompting an LLM is decidedly not that!
The worst part is the challenge of evaluating them.- Simon Willison

This is a prime example of how much we still have yet to figure out with AI. Simon also points out how gullible LLMs are. How are we going to maintain quality control?

Albeit, I am hopeful and optimistic about a future that needs new developers of all disciplines.

Articles Referenced:
https://www.joshwcomeau.com/blog/the-end-of-frontend-development/?utm_source=tldrwebdev

https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/31/ai-in-2023/#smart-and-dumb

https://qz.com/what-software-developers-using-chatgpt-can-tell-us-abou-1851116767

Image sourced from: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14202/production/_108243428_gettyimages-871148930.jpg.webp

DEV Community: Fletcher

Will "A.I." drastically change Web development?