My thoughts on AI + web dev.

Yes, there is no denying that at this point.

Models and tools have gotten so good, especially since Claude Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.2, that it's undeniable that they are pretty good at writing code and even one-shotting small projects.

That being said, AI agents are not able to write non-trivial software on their own. Maybe they never will. I don't think that we'll see improvements at the same rate as in 2025, where things got from "okay" to "pretty great" very fast.

But in any case, the job of a web developer has forever changed. More and more, our job will be of a higher-level, and less of writing all the actual code. Things like planning, communicating well, requirements-gathering, decision-making, problem-solving, code-reviewing, etc. Lots of new stuff to learn.

Many companies are also forcing AI on developers already, so there really is no going back, and it will be necessary for any serious web developer to master the skill of collaborating with AI agents going forward.

Now, the huge, constant hype around AI is too much for me, and I don't want to be a part of it. In fact, I completely stayed off twitter/X for the last months because it was getting into my head. But if you look beyond the hype, you do see that there is actual substance and value in building with LLMs.

Yes, definitely.

You should become an actual web developer if you want to build web projects, no matter if you write the code yourself or if you have an AI write it. Sure, you can get some help from an AI while learning (be careful with that), but you must learn stuff. Learning is not over.

I don't say that because I sell courses, but because I truly believe that someone who has no idea about the web, won't be capable of building good products and making a career out of this.

I do believe that the career of a web developer is changing a lot, as mentioned above, but that it will still exist in some shape or form going forward. But you will have to adapt and you will have to learn this stuff. But you should, at the same time, not neglect the foundations of web development.

That being said, you probably don't need to dive as deep into each technology as you would before, and learn and memorize every single syntax of JavaScript, React, etc.

But again, you do need to know things and have experience in order to make good decisions, architect code bases, build real products. That's why senior engineers are much more productive with AI than junior developers.

There's also another reason.

AI is great at a standard stack, like React, Next.js, shadcn/ui, and Tailwind, but it's not so good at other things that are not so prevalent in its training data, such as writing modern CSS.

So this is your opportunity to become an expert in aspects like modern CSS, modern React features such as <Activity /> or new hooks (useOptimistic, useActionState, useEffectEvent, etc.), or even whole new philosophies like local-first applications, which AI will never build if you don't carefully steer it that way.

But to become this expert, someone who is better than AI, you need to first know about the fundamentals. And that's where I can (hopefully) help you.

This is what I want for you: I want you to be able to be better than AI, more valuable, so that you become irreplaceable. I want you to be the engineer who actually understands how things work. I want you to outsmart AI. That's even in the headline of my homepage.

Yes, I have been using AI extensively since mid-2025, both with the goal of learning how to work with it effectively, and in order to build some apps and tools that are useful for myself.

I have built a course curriculum builder, a course topic index, a photo viewer with integrated map, some CLI tools, an alternative Chrome bookmarks manager, a markdown notes editor with to-do integrations, and more.

It is really fun building like this and being able to move so fast. When I'm deep into one of these projects, I actually get really hooked, especially now that the models are so good.

That being said, this is only possible because I'm already a web developer and know what I'm doing. If I was just a beginner, none of this would be possible, at least not at this speed.

Things have changed so fast in 2025 alone, that my workflows are also constantly changing.

Initially, I used to go back and forth with ChatGPT about a certain project idea, until we had a complete specification, split it up into tasks, and then bring that into Cursor and build the app using agent mode. In those days, LLMs were not that good yet, and it was a pretty frustrating experience with lots of debugging.

Now I switched mostly to Claude Code, but I still write the product specification or PRD with ChatGPT, and then I bring that into Claude Code. There I use plan mode extensively to have Claude come up with plans for either the entire app or for individual features.

Since I only work on projects for myself, I've mostly been "vibe coding" without reading the code line by line. But of course, this is not how I would build an actual production-ready app.

Vibe coding is not how AI is (or should be) used in actual dev jobs. Real teams use "AI-assisted engineering", which relies on code reviews, lots of testing, careful planning, documentation. This, again, means the job is changing.

I might share more about this in the future, which brings me to my next question.

The short answer: I don't know yet.

The longer answer: yeah, probably. But I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it.

The field is moving so rapidly that if I release a course right now, it would be outdated in six months. That's not sustainable for a $10 course on Udemy.

But I do want to share some workflows and all my learnings, which are a lot. Both the practical learnings and insights that I have gotten from working with AI over the last year, but also some foundational knowledge so that you know a bit about how things actually work. A bit like all my other courses.

That being said, there's no crazy amount of knowledge needed to becoming good with AI, so it won't be a massive 30 or 50-hour course like my others.

If you're interested in an AI course, please fill in this form, it helps a lot!