Will AI Replace Web Developers? - Here’s What I Think

ChatGPT was launched on the 30th of November 2022 and it took the whole world by storm. In just 1 year, 4 improved versions of the AI application have entered the market and ChatGPT - 5 is set to be released in 2025. While medium to large companies are excited about this news, many feel threatened by ChatGPT and other AI applications in the market. Now, with these applications learning how to code, website developers worry they will lose their jobs. But is that true? Let’s find out!

Will AI Replace Web Developers?

The short answer is ‘no’. AI has the potential to automate certain aspects of web development, especially the repetitive and boring tasks that come with the territory. But, you still need a human touch, coding basics, and software knowledge to build the application.?

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This doesn’t mean AI software can’t make your work easier. In fact, AI software is helping web developers code faster and improve output. Here are some ways AI is helping web developers:

1.?? Front End Development

Front-end development is all about how the website looks to its users. It includes wire framing, UI/UX design prototyping and content. While it can speed certain things up, AI cannot replace web developers.?

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Here’s how AI can help with front-end development:

• Autocomplete code suggestions: AI can suggest the potential code for you. This can speed up a lot of processes and reduce human errors.
• Design Assistance: When you set out to design the frontend, an AI tool can track trends and suggest color schemes, typography, layouts etc.?
• Testing: AI tools can test the responsiveness of a website (i.e. how it behaves on different screens)?
• Content generation: AI tools can help generate content for the website, and make meta tags and meta descriptions for search engines
• Predict user behaviour: AI can help you improve the interface by predicting user behaviour so that you can anticipate user needs and requirements
• Maintain industry standards: Research is crucial for industry standards; after all, you must know what the standards are to maintain them! Using AI for industry research can help you reach a conclusion faster

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As you can see AI can assist a human being in these areas but we still need human involvement. Here’s where we will need human judgment in frontend development:

• Reading and initiating code: A web developer will still need to know the language to read the code and initiate code for the AI software
• Creativity: While AI can generate inspiration for you, a coder will have to use their imagination to put things together
• Editing content: While AI tools are excellent for generating content, they are still machines. We need human involvement to check if the content is factually correct, cohesive and not ‘mechanical’
• Implementing research: Lastly, AI can be great for researching but going through the findings, and filtering what is important vs what is not, is a human being’s responsibility.

2.?????????? Backend Development

Just like front-end development, backend development can benefit a lot from AI, without replacing human functions. Here’s how AI can help with backend development:

• Generating and optimizing code: AI can not only generate code but read through the manual code and suggest improvements
• Bug testing and fixing: AI software can go through your code, test processes and suggest fixes to your problems
• Data management and Analysis: AI can manage algorithms and large datasets and provide insights that will help developers with the decision-making process
• Predictive maintenance: AI software is excellent for predicting the future. Many developers use it to predict future failures based on current actions and make the necessary changes to the website code
• Resource allocation: AI can help detect which resources need to be allocated where so that everything is working at their optimum level

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So you can see AI can play a crucial role in developing a website’s backend. But, to incorporate AI, the developer needs to know 2 things - how to code the backend and how to use AI, both of which have a significant learning curve.?

AI and Web Development - The Current Scenario

AI still has a long way to go to take over the web development game. And, the chances of that happening are only a possibility because when intelligence is artificial, it cannot replace the capabilities of a real brain. Although, AI can replace certain human tasks, it will never replace a human being.

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Currently, AI is helping more than harming the industry. Since AI can enable speed coding, and make it more efficient, developers can code faster, and not only that, any developer can develop complicated websites using AI. What may have taken months to develop might only take a few weeks in certain situations. However, this does come with its own set of disadvantages too, thus one will have to be prepared to spend extra time dealing with the possible bugs that they might sometimes encounter in the AI generated code.

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Adapting AI to the development process is crucial. AI tools can certainly help with making your work more efficient, however the inclusion of human touch is also certainly important with it. AI cannot replace a developer but it can definitely assist them in completing more number of tasks in a short period of time.