the death of frontend development

Published: 5/5/2025

“Frontend developers are no longer needed.”

A friend of mine said this to me recently, referencing a viral Instagram reel.

The reel shows a presentation by Canva, introducing their new one-click website generation AI tool. The presenter claims anyone can create interactive websites without learning to code.

“This is it, AI is finally going to take my job.”

I panicked for a minute, until I realized: this concept is nothing new. 20 years ago, people could already create websites without learning to code.

The 1st(?) death of frontend development

HTML, CSS & JavaScript were created in the 90s. The only way to create websites was to learn these languages.

To fix HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, people created PHP. The unkillable programming language that people claim will die every year, but is still running on 77% of websites.

After that, two web developers created WordPress, which runs on PHP. It was first created for managing blogs. But soon got a little bit too popular and is now capable of building almost any website.

With drag-and-drop website builders like Elementor, people can build websites without writing any code. People claim that soon, frontend developers will no longer be needed.

After that, all kinds of website builders came up, including Wix, Ghost, and Shopify. Later on, Webflow was created to build highly customizable websites.

Before these AI tools even came up, frontend development had died a couple of times.

So why do people still hire developers? Are they just dumb and don’t know these tools exist?

Maybe some of them are, but most people did it because they aren’t satisfied with what they created with these tools. You see, these tools are customizable, but they are never fully customizable.

You see, there are two types of websites really.

The first one is websites, like portfolio websites, restaurants’ online menus, and landing pages. They use mostly HTML & CSS,

And the second is web apps. UI is just a small part of them. They use much more more technologies, including both a frontend and a backend.

You can create websites pretty easily with these no-code tools, but it’s impossible to create large-scale web apps with them.

If you are a developer, you will most likely be working on web apps.

AI website builders

The no-code website builders are slightly different. They allow people to write code with prompts instead of just using pre-built components, so they are more customizable.

But still, they aren’t good enough to create customized websites with very specific requirements. They may get the ui 90% right, but software is very sophisticated. 90% just means it doesn’t work. And who’s going to fix the broken website?

Even if they can copy any website UI perfectly, they are still not good enough. Why?

Because the job of a frontend developer, contrary to what many people think, is not just creating UIs. That’s only 5% of the job. Frontend developers need to debug, handle data and API calls, optimize page load time and SEO, talk to clients or teams to clarify the requirements, and make sure the website works on major browsers and different devices. Now they also need to fix the AI generated crap.

If you want to go with Frontend, check out these courses created by Meta engineers.

Upon finishing them, you will be overqualified for any entry-level frontend role.

​Become a professional frontend developer here.