Jen Simmonsjensimmons@front-end.social
Oct 15, 2026, 11:57 PMHave you been making websites for years? How are you feeling about the current state of things?
Replies
FreediverXfreediverx@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:00 AM@jensimmons
🤮
Capitalism has destroyed the internet, as it does everything else.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:03 AM@jensimmons I feel like Claris Homepage 2.0 development on my macOS 9 Personal Web Sharing server is getting further and further behind with standards support ;)
Jon Williamsshovemedia@triangletoot.partyOct 16, 2026, 12:05 AM@jensimmons the browsers have gotten faster, more capable, more standards compliant (thanks!) The frameworks have gotten overly-complex, bloated, and fragile. The job-market is the worst I’ve seen it in 30 years. Very few people are making cool things for the web compared to 20 years ago because of a combination of corporate capture, slop farms, and user fatigue
Oct 16, 2026, 12:05 AM@jensimmons Very unsure! I don't need so much of a developer team anymore with the things AI can do. But people with no UX or usability experience can also do whatever they want. I see a lot of Macromedia Flash style garbage resurfacing.
Simon Cox :SEO:simoncox@seocommunity.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:05 AMMy personal website is the best it’s ever been thanks to #11ty but the web in general? It’s lost its way.
Jon Mitchellablaze@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:19 AM@jensimmons Never better. I just wish website culture had kept pace with siloed app culture; it’s hard to get people to visit a website. But we are in a glorious era for making websites.
mikesuszmikesusz@front-end.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:20 AM@jensimmons surely you will get few quality replies to this. but - with 30 years of experience, i’d like to be working.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:21 AM@jensimmons I have been building websites since 1995. The current state of megacorp controlled search and social media, combined with the rise of AI scrapers and slop generators, makes me believe the web is effectively dead. Finding real content is no longer possible. Bots making sites for bots, no humans in sight.
Molly Bmjibrower@vivaldi.netOct 16, 2026, 12:52 AM@krusynth @jensimmons Also '95. I do find some good things, but VERY recently, the vibe-coded imitations of older sites have been bugging me. One sprang up recently that is similar to one I built by hand in PHP/MySQL a long time ago, and I'm kinda like, oh, I spent a year of my life building a site and they just prompted Claude and did it in a weekend. But I use Copilot at work for stuff a data analyst could do by hand, so...
Oct 16, 2026, 12:27 AM@jensimmons Ai definitely speeds up things to a point where someone doesn’t need to be the best developer to output a decent and accessible website. People still need to be able to mention the proper terms to Ai to steer it in the proper direction most of the time, but part of me is wondering if “Web developer” will even exist as a title in the future as it could get replaced with "Web Master" (ironically) or simply Web UX expert, Web project manager or orchestrator. (1/2)
- Oct 16, 2026, 12:27 AM
I personally feel blessed that I know how to build everything and anything by hand for having been in the industry for 20 years, but I won’t lie: I rarely code by hand at all anymore… sucks the soul a bit. I liked facing a problem and finding the proper tech stack and code to resolve the issue, but that’s not viable anymore. Kevin Powell lays it out well in many videos on his general musings channel : https://youtube.com/@generalmusings?si=9RGM_Cw_EDRYw4Ir (2/2)
Tony Fiskarfisk@aus.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:30 AM@jensimmons Not having made an official website for years, I can't really speak for the current state of things.
However, I will say that the standards divergent IE is no more, which is a good thing. We also have decent SVG editors, and browsing debuggers.
Oh, and while AJAX wasn't terrible as a server callback mechanism, it has been improved upon.
I do feel for those UX folk who thought they were getting an artistry gig , and discovered statistical modelling instead (Chi squared is a thought for your Halloween costume)
And, of course, AI poisons every creative wellspring.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:32 AM@jensimmons Hoooo, I mean... mixed, I guess?
I've recently had some of the best web-dev experiences of my life by going back to "basics" with writing JSP that emits nice HTML and CSS lifted up by modals, popover, and so many other good things, and that is outright a joy. It's like when I first learned with PHP in the 90s but refined to a delightful sheen.
As for the rest of the ecosystem... yikes.
Rianrianmurnen@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:31 AM@jensimmons despondent
spartanatreyuspartanatreyu@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:37 AMCSS is getting better.
Browser dev tools are falling behind:
- Finding the correct panel in Chrome/Edge is useless because there's so many they had to shove them in an undiscoverable command prompt.
- Firefox's is starting to have Safari's issue where editing css in an inspected element goes out of sync with what's rendered in the page.
- Safari's dev tools still feel like they're 15 years behind. Poor density and I can't have the two panels I want open at the same time.
Ralph Brandithereisnocat@toot.cafeOct 16, 2026, 12:50 AM@jensimmons I spent 31 years as a web developer before retiring two years ago. I am so glad to be not making web sites any more, at least for clients. The web has turned into a morass, everything sucked up by AI for training. I get notifications from one of my hosts that the host is using almost 100% CPU. There’s almost nothing there; they’re being ravaged by bots. Yeah, I’m glad I’m out of it now.
J.P. Stewartjpsays@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 12:53 AM@jensimmons
Yes.I’m sad that the current technology is so complex as to require expensive software to make real, professional, websites.
Page maker, publisher, software similar, all gone. :(
This really encourages people to:
A. Sign up with a walled garden framework (word press, substack, tumbler, squarespace, wix, Shopify, figma, canva, and more)B. Build AI slop
(Yes, I know the static blog generators. They don’t always work for all sites. We settled for buying nicepage. It’s… “ok”.)
Luke Suttonlukesutton@mastodon.auOct 16, 2026, 1:09 AM@jensimmons Front-end javascript frameworks have made most websites intolerable. Basic browser functionality is broken all the time. Everything is slow and brittle. I don't need a single webpage to require 50mb of data.
No one cares about accessibility or speed. All the things we worked so hard on back in the day, out the window. It's just fast delivery of something that's slow and looks like everything else.
However. Modern browsers rule. What you get with HTML, CSS with a little JS is incredible to me. All the little hacks and libraries I had to use in the past, gone!
That means it's still fun to make well-crafted things for yourself.
But the corporate web is cooked.
Chris Armstrongarmstrong@mastodon.designOct 16, 2026, 1:10 AM@jensimmons excited
Oct 16, 2026, 1:24 AM1) Yes. Decades.
2) Terrible. Considering becoming a bartender.
Jeremy Keithadactio@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 1:35 AM1st question: Yes, I am an old.
2nd question: Web standards are better than ever …but at the same time, in the world of web dev, the vibes are very, very off.
(because of large language models)
Oct 16, 2026, 6:54 AM@adactio @jensimmons seconded!
Oct 16, 2026, 1:45 AM@jensimmons I’m pivoting my entire business to include an educational component because the industry at large has made making a website needlessly complicated in order to breed dependence.
The platform is moving in the right direction for engineers, and the wrong direction for everyone else.
Frankly, it’s depressing.
Oct 16, 2026, 2:04 AMA bunch of loud people who know less than they think they do and are pushing their own agendas.
It’s actually the same as always, except now we have htmx instead of Web Components and React, and the 500KB club instead of micro frontends or monorepos; and, as the cherry on top, the anti-AI and pro-AI folks.
Right now, each of my projects has a different tech stack, ranging from Rust/React and Go/Web Components to Bun/TS. Over the past 10 years, though, I've gotten a little tired of exploring new technologies. I still enjoy reading specs and explore new domains, though :)
I have to admit I have little experience with WordPress projects; my professional work so far has focused exclusively on custom solutions. That said, I feel that accessibility, semantic HTML, and standard CSS have regained importance in recent years.
Oct 16, 2026, 3:08 AM@jensimmons @Meyerweb Since the late 1900s! It's still fun. Currently learning svg which feels like learning html in the late '90s (overall positive, but many very similar "why is it like that?" idiosyncrasies). I wish fonts were handled better. CSS has gotten pretty darn good. I still think basing things on xml was a mistake and continues to be a drag, but whatever. I wish something in the html+css stack allowed for actual macros. Still feels magical.
LLMs are trash.
Johannes Odlandjohannes@front-end.socialOct 16, 2026, 3:19 AM@jensimmons Yeah.
The web platform and standards are better than ever.
But things are feeling off. We fear for our jobs, and the ecosystem. Open source is under pressure. The world.. well.. I’m not feeling optimistic atm.
Oct 16, 2026, 4:34 AM@jensimmons I feel overwhelmed by the amount of new features that are getting implemented.
sknob :noai:sknob@mamot.frOct 16, 2026, 5:13 AM@jensimmons slop everywhere. Scrapers everywhere. GenAI is a scourge.
Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)jaredwhite@indieweb.socialOct 16, 2026, 5:41 AM@jensimmons basically this:
CarolynCStamp@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 5:45 AM@jaredwhite @jensimmons That describes so much of the world these days.
Oct 16, 2026, 5:45 AM@jensimmons I imagined web apps would have been a bigger deal than it is by now. Everyone uses a mobile phone and there are a lot of API:s and tech around it, yet support for them is limited on the largest platform. It’s almost like it _should_ be hard to develop and install a PWA on iOS.
Oct 16, 2026, 6:15 AMOn the whole, really quite positive!
It is easier than ever to generate a static site with RSS feeds. It could be easier still, but good all the same.
Choice of browsers isn't amazing, and I wonder what browser I'll be using next year, but it is still tolerable.
I am seeing more people running their own website and posting their own handwritten stuff, which is wonderful.
IPv6 adoption is increasingly, albeit too slowly. Whoop!
Elricelricofmelnibone@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 6:18 AM@jensimmons I write XHTML like it's 1999. No unclosed tags on my lawn!
Matt Roundmattround@crispsandwi.chOct 16, 2026, 6:31 AM
Mike Piontekrobotspacer@xoxo.zoneOct 16, 2026, 6:33 AM@jensimmons I’ve been making web sites since 1995. I’m not enthused about the state of the web, but the state of making web sites is better than ever. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are all so much easier to work with, and you can do far more with less.
Joni Korpijonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.placeOct 16, 2026, 7:04 AM@jensimmons the entire industry has walked into a sinkhole, leaving me behind
Oct 16, 2026, 7:16 AM@jensimmons yeah, pretty good.
New CSS features are nice - although some a bit over complicated.
Most new HTML features are niche enough to be ignored.
Bit annoying that there's still so much discrepancy between desktop and mobile.
Glad shims aren't everywhere. Most people have realised that CDNs for JS/CSS aren't good news.
Nice resurgence in smaller sites.
All the old stuff still works - I can FTP to prod without a build and deploy if I want.
New image formats seem genuinely more efficient.
netop://ウィビnetopwibby@social.coopOct 16, 2026, 7:23 AM@jensimmons No longer needing Sass is wild, thought I’d never see the day. OKLCH is my favorite web feature of the past 20 years.
The industry coalescing around React pisses me off and has cost me better paying roles because I refuse to learn it.
All in all, not bad, I’m glad people are getting away from what the zeitgeist says is “in” and just building interesting sites.
Oct 16, 2026, 7:53 AM@jensimmons The technology is at its best. HTML, CSS and JS are incredibly powerful and modern web APIs are reliably good.
The state of the web on the other hand… let’s just say I’m wondering who we’re making websites for these days. Apart from personal blogs, the web seems to be a corporate slop fest.
Oliver Buschgummibando@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 8:25 AM@jensimmons It was the most fun when the college website ran off a spare barebones Mac with MacHTTP and NetCloak.
Current state (only mildly dramaticized): fending off AI crawlers whose parent company has gobbled up the very JavaScript runtime O/S project the site uses.
But, how far KHTML has come…
Ste Grainerstegrainer@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 9:35 AM@jensimmons Optimistic and happy about the speed, innovation, and browser coverage of web standards.
Sad and frustrated by all the AI companies trying to take the work away just to produce barely acceptable slop mired in third party dependencies.
Eric Eggertyatil@yatil.socialOct 16, 2026, 9:47 AM@jensimmons If I had any skills beyond working on the web, I would be gone*.
I don’t think the web that is built today is the web I fell in love with. I don’t think that having the web still qualifies as “mostly good”. I doubt that most big players in web technology have a healthy, human-rights first web on their mind. I think there are still people that do, but they are slowly replaced by the slop machines that just do (badly) what capitalists think the web should look like.
*professionally
Oct 16, 2026, 9:50 AM@jensimmons as a long time web maker and web user, I've personally been impressed by the web's continued ability to support "small" use cases - small organisations, small businesses, small communities, etc... e.g. small merchants that use web payment, or small communities that form their own fediverse instances. So yes - there is a lot of corporate centralisation, but small web, for every day use cases that impact people's lives, continues to be a theme.
Manuel Strehl 🫏boldewyn@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 9:59 AM@jensimmons professional web developer for 19 years.
I run a small personal website that gained some praise for being helpful (Unicode explainer). 2 years ago I loved working on it, experimenting with cutting edge web tech.
Today this joy is completely gone. The site goes regularly down because AI scrapers hammer it (yes, even behind CF). Trying out new stuff and upgrading current things are mostly a debugging nightmare.
The trust into and stability of the platform are vanishing rapidly.
Oct 16, 2026, 10:38 AM@jensimmons Mixed. Cautiously optimistic, occasionally exhausted.
Sjors Rijsdamsjorsrijsdam@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 11:01 AM@jensimmons "Love the craft, hate the industry" pretty much sums it up
Steve Grunwellstevegrunwell@phpc.socialOct 16, 2026, 1:04 PM@jensimmons I'm reconsidering whether to continue my career path of 18 years 😔
Oct 16, 2026, 4:53 PM@stevegrunwell @jensimmons dreadful. Came back to freelancing after being laid off in Jan from a job I’ve had since 2019, and its bleak.
topher1kenobetopher1kenobe@fosstodon.orgOct 16, 2026, 1:07 PM@jensimmons I feel like I only know one way to do it. "Web development" isn't really a thing anymore. It's Laravel or wordpress or rails or react or N~.
Matt Zagajamzagaja@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 4:29 PM@jensimmons https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover sums it up for me.
Brian Turner 🐝SteakPinball@mastodon.socialOct 16, 2026, 9:28 PM@jensimmons Making sites since the early 2000s. Current state is poor and trending worse. First problem is over-reliance on JS. Many sites use too much JS, most often a large framework, and it leads to poor UX. Second is switch to tooling. Documentation and tutorials used to teach code, and now teach CLI commands. It's removing the developer from the code. LLMs fall into this category. Both can be summarized as vendor lock-in. The increased vendor lock-in is making the web crap.
👨💻 Fer5.1.jsMobilepadawan@sfba.socialOct 16, 2026, 10:22 PMAbout the languages: I like the current state! Amazing CSS, amazing HTML tags and incredible JS features!
About the websites design: I can feel the same that the last 20 years: every website looks like the other ones.
Yesterday: bc the web designers used to copy the moment tendences.
Today: bc the IA agent copy the yesterday and today's tendences.
Oct 16, 2026, 11:19 PM@jensimmons I dislike this and any wave of everything being JavaScript. I am mixed on new APIs that are similar to existing APIs but completely separate (e.g., opening a picture-in-picture window being so separate from opening a regular pop-up window). I am very happy with the recent trend of building common UI patterns into HTML, like dialogs and pop-ups. I also like a lot of “PWA” ideas of the web being able to engage with “native” features more, and I hope those continue to improve.
Oct 17, 2026, 12:34 AM@jensimmons Making websites is amazing. Experiencing popular websites is usually not a great experience.
Felixflerox@techhub.socialOct 17, 2026, 5:08 AM@jensimmons I feel like I’ve gotten more tools to put my ideas out there, whether it’s CSS, HTML, JS or AI advancements. I believe everything that is not typing has gotten more important - design sense, a clear vision, knowing what techniques to use and when. As a creative it couldn’t be better. Also, I’ve seen non-technical people create apps and sites that previously had no way to accomplish that which is mind blowing to think about.
Oiva Eskolaoivaeskola@mementomori.socialOct 17, 2026, 5:25 PM@jensimmons why are the fonts suddenly so small again
