This is my first post on this website, so let me tell you what this is. It's a so-called "portfolio website," but my main purpose is to write about my new findings and learnings. When I learn something new or build something cool (which I think is cool), I'll share it. I think the internet is going to be pretty AI-slop pretty soon, so this is basically the "human touch" about new tech or tools, I guess. This will also work like a journal.
On the frontend, and whether it's "dead"
The frontend of this site was mainly built by my agent (an AI I built... you know, a modification of an open-source model). Frontend is officially dead, I guess — or it's like 20 hours of work you can now do in 15 minutes with a carefully written, good prompt. Regardless, you still have to know what you're actually doing. I can now build any frontend requirement in 2 hours using a somewhat smart AI — but is that because I know the tech at its core, or because anyone can do it now? Wanna know what the most advanced AI as of (date: 2026-08-12) says? It says:Frontend isn't dead. The job of hand-writing every div is dying. AI mostly replaced the typing — boilerplate, common layouts, CRUD forms — which was never where the actual skill lived anyway.
What it didn't replace is knowing whether the output is correct. You can't debug what you can't read. When the AI-generated component breaks on Safari, or state updates in the wrong order, or the layout shifts on mobile, you need a real mental model of the DOM, the cascade, and JS execution to even know what question to ask next. Without that, you're just re-prompting and hoping, which is slower than fixing it yourself.
Calculators didn't kill math education. They killed manual arithmetic as a job requirement. You still learn arithmetic first, because without it you can't sanity-check the calculator or catch a wrong assumption. Same shape here.
My own take
No, not just anyone can build a website now just because AI is smart. Building one with AI is like playing a lottery. You're at the mercy of whatever the AI overlord gives you in return for your prompt. Customizing anything with AI is a total nightmare if you can't tell what is what or what you actually want So if I were advising a newcomer today:- Learn core HTML/CSS/JS — not mastery, just enough to hand-build a real layout, a form with validation, a fetch call. Weeks, not years.
- Learn why things break — box model, specificity, the event loop.This is what makes you dangerous with AI tools instead of dependent on them.
- Then go full AI-assisted for velocity. Use it like a power tool, not a replacement for knowing what a wall stud is.