Being a Frontend developer in the age of AI

I am a quite frequent visitor to the r/webdev sub Reddit community, recently I saw a post where the OP posted about how one of OP’s client is asking why would they pay him if it can be done with AI using tools. OP left the client and most who commented on the post agreed that OP is right, The client will get what he is paying for using AI for professional website!!

It made me thinking is being a frontend developer relevant anymore where you could just write a single to spit out a complete website using bolt, loveable.dev and v0.dev?

When I started my career I used to work as a web developer, learning PHP and developing website using WordPress or CodeIgniter framework, The thing I enjoyed more about being a web developer is working with things that was rendered on the browser(frontend). I felt static when I was able make changes on Firefox dev tools and see it on live. At that time JS wast not that enjoyable to work with, it all changed with the introduction of jQuery and other JS frameworks like mootools. Man I can’t explain the feeling of excitement I felt when I could use few lines of jQuery to fetch content from an API and update the Dom real time. That’s one of the reason I choose Frontend Engineering as specialisation.

The landscape changed quite a lot since then, Frontend development became a quite complex. [Angular which borrowed ideas from backbone.js and knockout.js, paved the road for Vue, React, Svelte and many more. React is so popular that you can call it the jQuery of modern day, we are currently in the age of meta frameworks, frameworks like next.js and nuxt, we also have static site generators like 11ty, astro, hugo and many more.

The point is modern day web is a lot different than previous days it’s more complex, user spends more time on the web then ever, so being passionate about frontend side of things and choosing to become a frontend engineer makes sense in a lot of ways. The question is is it still relevant career to pursue in 2025?

When you could ask ChatGPT create a complete website using tailwind with a single command, Use tools like bolt to generate website and also publish it!! One would think they don’t need a web designer or developer anymore, which is true in some way, but you will get hit on the face with reality when you would try come with something with better brand value or something that actually converts your visitors to customers. It’s a good enough for a simple landing page or a portfolio, or even a simple eCommerce website, But try coming with a complex e-commerce website that needs to drive sales, where sale funnel is very important, these tools don’t understand context, it will start hallucinating if you give too much commands, these tools does not understand psychological differences of users from different countries/regions. Empathy is a very important part of web design and development and these tools completely lacks it.

I feel like these tools are not replacement for real professionals, these tools will replace the tedious workers that’s for sure, example it can help you generate table component using tailwind and react, but where and how you are going to use it, these tools can’t help you that!! You have to use your knowledge of UX and experience to figure that out. Maybe one day it would be able to do it, just not today.

With the rise of AI tools, we could quadruple our productivity, the bar is higher to get a good quality job, and new developers over reliance on these tools could be catastrophic for their careers, we dreamt of tools like these, but I am glad we are from a period where you had to learn everything from scratch, as modern day developers are ignoring the basics of web development and jumping straight on to React, not understanding request, response cycle, not understanding basics of unit testing. And if you grow your career with these AI tools and don’t learn about the basics, when the time will come, you will surely get replaced.

The gist is now a days a developer has a lot of tools up their Arsenal compared to previous time, which should make them better at their job not make theme obsolete, modern day developers need to adapt and must learn the basics, and from time to time read the documentation instead of asking ChatGPT all the time!