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Michael Grechka
Michael Grechka

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Is it too late to become a web developer in X year? đŸ€”

When I started learning web development back in 2019, I had the same doubts as everyone else. Even then, website builders were around, and people were already saying (oh no!) that they’d replace all web developers. This concern was always there, but it didn’t stop me from exploring the world of development.

By 2020, when I was finally making some progress, WebAssembly was starting to gain traction. People said it could make front-end developers obsolete by letting programmers compile languages like C# into WASM, so you could have a website written entirely in C#. Why bother learning JavaScript, right?

Then, in 2021, I noticed mobile development taking off, especially with Flutter. It seemed like you could build cross-platform apps for anything, including the web. That made me wonder if websites would even be needed anymore, with mobile apps growing so fast.

In 2022, GitHub Copilot arrived and scared everyone who saw it. Who would’ve thought a programmer could just write plain English, and the program would generate the code automatically? Yet here we are, and the world didn’t end.

Fast forward to 2023, and we started hearing more about the IT job market being oversaturated. Tons of people were coming out of boot camps claiming to have 10 years of experience after just a 3-month crash course. Job postings would get 200 applications within hours. Suddenly, just knowing how to code wasn’t enough anymore. Hiring became a mess.

Now it’s 2024. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini
 Programmers? Who needs them when AI is taking over everything?

Looking back, I’ve realized that there’s always been something to worry about. It’s human nature to doubt. And yeah, it’s scary to think you might waste time on something that could end up being pointless. But those are just fears and excuses.

People have always questioned whether web development is still worth it, and you could spend forever doubting yourself. But over the past five years, you could’ve built a solid career. There will always be reasons not to dive into web development, but the web will keep evolving. So the real question is


... is it too late to learn web development in 2025? đŸ€Ł

Follow me on Telegram: t.me/mike_in_web

Top comments (3)

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alvaromontoro profile image
Alvaro Montoro • Edited

During my first class in college 25 years ago (yes, I'm old-ish), the professor made a comment along the lines of "whatever you learn here will be useless as soon as quantum computing is a reality. That will be soon, and then you all will be out of a job." I get the same vibes from people claiming this or that development will be over once AI is fully here. In my opinion, it is a misunderstanding of how the tooling will impact the development in itself. AI will not make web development outdated, it will make it easier... But there will still be a need for web developers. As you mentioned, there will always be something that people are worried about.

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gregharis profile image
GrĂ«g HĂ€ris • Edited

Although I am just starting my journey now, but this question was one of the questions that had always stopped me in my tracks when trying to learn.

Now I just realized that web development will keep evolving with new tools and method. So it's either you as a developer evolve or die!

So I believe that web development is worth learning in 2025- we learners just have to incorporate the new tools and methods in our learning journey.

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almaren profile image
Alexander

It's too late to start coding career. I finished software engineering in 2015, had a break for a last few years, and now I feel like a dinosaur with all that modern frameworks that are significantly updated each week.
Will be demand only in LLM, VR/AR, robotics engineers.
Possible in US the situation in the market is better, but in the EU it's catastrophic to get a senior position.