The End of Front-end
A lot has happened recently in tech and you might be thinking: what does it mean for my future? Should you even worry about it?
While this is the beginning of a much larger shift in the industry, it is important to look at the past to understand why front-end might go away in the future.
A while ago, most websites were managed by one or just a few people. The reason being that most businesses did not need a website to begin with.
But as we have seen the number of online businesses growing, so was the need for front-end developers.
This is also when many frameworks started to emerge, shifting the focus on creation rather than reinventing the wheel.
Users vs Inventors
This is kind of where we are today: most of us have become framework and library users more than inventors and problem solvers.
Most of our daily tasks already have an answer and can be solved with existing tools.
This is actually why coding interviews often get a lot of hate: there is this huge disconnection between the actual work we do, and the skills involved in writing algorithms.
The Rise of Platforms
I believe front-end is a great example of this. Most of the work is based on common patterns: create pages, implement designs, interact with an API, and…what else?
Very few of us work on anything new.
And while each company has an app to interface with their services, most of the internet revolves around just a few platforms.
Which even begs the question: do most companies need apps, when they could bet on platforms that everybody already use?
We are moving towards a world where platforms represent businesses and individuals.
If you don’t have a personal website, that’s okay. But if you don’t have an account on social media or good reviews, that’s a problem.
We also get all of our answers from Google and don’t even check full websites anymore.
I believe that what’s ahead of us is businesses that integrate with platforms, which will leave very little space to exotic designs.
Today, you can sell on social media, offer customer support, etc. All of this, on top of an increased traffic you get from the platforms, that you could ever hardly get with an isolated website.
From the Instagram for Business website:
With 70% of shoppers looking to Instagram for their next purchase, it’s time to open up shop right here.
This will definitely reduce the need for front-end developers, web designers in favour of a platform-based internet.
However, business to business tools will stick around for a while but anything business to customer might take a different road in the coming years.
A New Reality
Before you panic, let’s think about this a bit more.
If you look at virtual and augmented reality technologies, these two have clearly gotten a lot of hate and for good reason.
But while we had to wait for the iPhone to introduce what smartphones for humans could be, it is just as likely that we are waiting for the same revolution with augmented reality.
Remember that the first version of Windows came out in 1985, while the first iPhone was in 2007. It’s been more than a decade and another product will take its place.
And when that happens, user interfaces will comply with the platform standards, reducing app-specific designs because of the platform constraints.
Think about your smart tv applications or even your smartwatch. This will put the focus around what your app does, rather than what it looks like.
And if this complexity is going away, we might see more no-code tools for creating unified interfaces. And to be fair, it already exists for UI and logic, as much as you can build games with a blueprint editor today.
The End?
These technologies will come, and when others’ easy answer is to hate on what isn’t working yet, please be that one person to be curious.
Because at the core of every good engineer is openness to change and curiosity.
Always remember what got you started and why you do what you do.
Developers are not going anywhere, yet it looks clear to me that most of the front-end will shift to new areas or nothing at all.
And since we’ve been relearning a new JavaScript framework every two years, I’m pretty sure we’ll be alright.
💬 Please, feel free to share what you think in the comments.
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