Web development is fun again

Summary

I remember when PHP 4 was a thing. jQuery was new and shiny. Sites were built with tables, not divs. Dreamweaver felt like a life hack. Designs were sliced in Photoshop. Databases lived in phpMyAdmin. It probably didn’t feel like it at the time, but looking back, those were simpler days. The entire concept of the development cycle could fit in my head. There was complexity in building web applications, but it was all manageable. If you had an idea, you could probably build it. As a solo developer, you could manage everything. From idea to execution. Or at least, it felt that way. I’m probably romanticizing the past, but you get the idea. Complexity outgrew my ability to follow# Today, it’s hard to do web development right. On the frontend, you have build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images… I remember when the biggest challenge was IE6 compatibility. On the backend, there are design patterns, unit tests, code coverage, APIs, performance concerns, dependency management, infrastructure, monitoring, log tracing, observability… Each area of expertise has grown up - probably for the better - but it also demands deeper domain knowledge. I chose to specialize in backend and server infrastructure. I had to step back from frontend work because I couldn’t keep up with its tooling while developing my backend skills. As a solo developer, it’s now a lot harder to manage everything. Leveling the playing field# AI has entered the chat. They’re far from perfect, but claude and codex gave me the leverage I desperately needed. They’ve brought me back to levels of productivity I haven’t felt in years. I feel like I can manage the entire stack again - with confidence. I can go from idea to execution in days. Suddenly, the complexity of each domain matters a lot less. Pattern recognition# Oh no, you’re vibe coding - bet it’s all slop and code noise! Over the past two decades, I...