Hello World! Today, I’d like to share some thoughts with you about modern web development, especially using AI, no-code, LLMs, etc. I have really enough! Everyone speaks about AI. Everyone wants AI integrated in projects, especially where such a technology has neither need nor use. I’m done of questions such as “aren’t you afraid AI will replace you at work?”... Answering that nonsense - no I’m not afraid. I’m happy AI exists and prospers. It makes my work better, faster and more efficient. Unbelievable, isn’t it? What a paradox? When everyone can create an app using single prompt, there is more demand for developers than before AI era? Why? Eveone can create an app for free and it’s simple. No code, just visual builder which walks you throught. People apply that apps on the maket, try new things, explore new sectors, try new approaches, implement new ideas fast, find new niches they wouldn’t find without help of AI… and then, when they’re stablelized, they come for the professional app to guys who know what they’re doing and can help them to grow bigger, supporting them on each step… helping doing business - it’s not only the app or website. It’s a whole process.
So, what’s a problem with apps built “for free”? Three problems actually: performance, security, maintaining and scaling. Let’s start from basics. What is “AI”? Is it a real “artificial intelligence”? No, it’s just LLM - a Large Language Model. Algorithm. It feeds on gigantic amount of data and predicts the best outcome with the best probability of success rate for every next iteration. It’s not “artificial intelligence” as we call it - just a shade of it. As every algorithm based on probability - it makes mistakes and halucinates. It’s not capable of independent thinking - it’s just a data processor. It can process fast a lot of data but results can be unpresized, incorrect; easily manipulated. It usually takes data from the Internet, codes and articles written by different people during different time periods - data quality issue. What comes next - performance issue, problems with maintaining and scaling. And then - security issue. Without control over code, you have no idea what’s happening inside, where you data go and what valnuabilities are hidden within your “magical app”.
My personal case. I had to run a couple of old websites in docker containers on the new server with already installed ngix. I’m not doing this on daily basis but everything went smoothly with assistance of AI. Some time after, one of the clients reported that their website is searchable in Google but it has data indexed from a different website. The issue was in incorrect httpd config inside docker container. I used AI to build them and AI hasn’t added configuration for port 80, just 443. As a result, the website was fully accessible under 443 because there were redirects 80->443 in Cloudflare and on the server but it didn’t work this way in terms of indexing by crawlers. As port 80 wasn’t open inside docker container, there was content from different website served (from local nginx) and indexed. That issue would never occur if I used ofisial docker documentation where you can copy example config with correct set up.
All I wanted to say, you should not 100% rely on AI. Give the most boring work to it and concentrate on the scale or creating something new and creative. So, are apps built by AI good or not? Absolutely! For the first time, when you need to show a quick idea or a prototype to the client or build MVP for presentation or… many other cases how you can use AI to make your life easier. After you’re settled, in my opinion, you need professional app. As there are more apps created, there is bigger demand for IT guys. But the market has shifted. First of all, using AI is obligatory. It’s not something additional. If you don’t use it - you’re out. Second thing, you need to be good at many areas at once. As there is more apps, you need to be able to understand more technologies in order to localize and fix the issue. You need to understand more IT things from different areas, know more frameworks, languages and specifics of infrastructure, etc... Code, server-side stuff, automations, deployment, CI/CD, app and server security, SEO and marketing… To be honest, to me it sounds like more work for IT guys. Will AI replace us? I don’t think so. It’s rather a tool to support you. Be reasonable and never stop growing. Learn new things all the time, take risks wisely and I’m sure you’ll be fine. AI creates opportunities, don’t make your own cage with it.
No AI was used during creating this article