r/webdev • u/thetymtravellr • 4h ago
Discussion As a self-taught React/Next.js developer, I'm honestly worried about my future in this AI era. What should I do?
I'm a self-taught developer, and I know React and Next.js. Lately, I've been feeling increasingly anxious about my future as a developer.
AI is moving so fast. It can generate components, build entire websites, connect APIs, and even create full-stack applications. Sometimes I wonder what the point is of spending months learning something when AI can already do so much of it.
I want to get a better-paying developer job, but honestly, I'm confused about what I should focus on right now. Should I keep improving my React/Next.js skills, get better at backend development, or start learning AI engineering?
I keep hearing about RAG, AI agents, vector databases, LLM integrations, and all these new things. It feels like there's always something new to learn, and I'm worried that if I focus on the wrong things, I'll fall behind while everyone else moves forward.
For those of you already working in the industry, what would you do if you were in my position? Would you focus on becoming a strong full-stack developer first, or would you start learning AI engineering alongside web development?
I'm not looking for a shortcut or expecting to become an expert overnight. I just want to make the right decisions, build useful skills, and have a realistic chance of getting hired.
I'd really appreciate some honest advice from people who have been through this or are dealing with the same situation. Right now, I could genuinely use some direction.
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u/DiddlyDinq 4h ago
Computer science is a big field. Frontend may be devalued but other areas arent. Technical devs should be expected to adjust their skills over time.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 2h ago
What is a technical dev? Clearly talking shit.
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u/DiddlyDinq 2h ago
Big difference between a front end 6-week coding camp dev and a technical computer science dev. Guess you're the former.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 2h ago
Clearly you have never worked on an actual project. You don’t have a clue what you are on about. I know plenty of front-end engineers who are very technical and did computer science. I also know many self-taught that are just as technical.
Why do you think frontend and comp science are related or different at all?
Because you’re clueless that’s why.
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u/DiddlyDinq 2h ago
computer science devs have the flexibility to work on anything and the same cant be said for front end only devs that lack the foundational science knowledge. Your overreaction confirmed which one you are. So sensitive lol
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u/SchartHaakon 1h ago
Lmao some people out here thinking that building REST apis and talking to databases is that much more complicated than building interactive UIs. Get over yourself.
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u/DiddlyDinq 1h ago
You clearly dont know what computer science is.
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u/SchartHaakon 1h ago
You very clearly have a superiority complex.
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u/DiddlyDinq 1h ago
Only superior to you lol. Go look at a computer science curriculum instead of saying dumb stuff.
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u/SchartHaakon 59m ago
I'm just pointing out the obvious. I don't think you realize how ignorant you're coming off in this thread but I know for sure your co-workers, if you have any, hate working with you.
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u/JohnCamus 2h ago
Not sure about that. Here you have a graphical programmer who got concerned, when he one shotted a graphics engine.
https://youtu.be/R_uf5OfMGio?is=WyXw6wS83kMMzF9j
Not here to be negative, but things are moving really fast and you cannot reliably see today where you need to move to not be swept away
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u/DiddlyDinq 2h ago
To be fair, graphics is a fairly simple field. 90 percent of devs are relying same small set of algorithms rather than inventing something unique. Phong, Parallax, Deferred Rendering, PBR etc. Widespread engine usage like unreal is a bigger threat to 3d rendering jobs than ai. Speaking as somebody that started as a 3d dev
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u/JohnCamus 1h ago
!remindMe 1 year “have more technical roles survived ai?”
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u/mq2thez 3h ago
Chasing the hype of the industry rarely pays off unless you have the deep technical basis to do things very few other people can.
AI is changing how we do the job, but the job itself remains straightforward: ship product. The more you know and the more you understand, the more effective AI will make you. It's a force multiplier, not a force replacement, so the better you are as an engineer, the more it'll be able to do for you and the more you'll be able to recognize and work around its flaws.
It's tempting to think that the "web" as a series of websites will die, but that seems pretty unlikely to me -- ultimately, people will use what they want. Some folks will always want to use a website, the same way that some folks only want to make certain types of purchases on a laptop rather than a cellphone (yes, I'm a millenial). That said, the websites we make and how we expect people to use them will change. You may end up designing sites intended for AI to use them as the interface for people. But that's all just skill in designing the "frontend" that your "users" connect to and interact with.
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u/Different_Counter113 3h ago
Second this. Ive played with AI and without sufficient prompt engineering that can only come from a deep technical understanding of what youre asking it to do, it will produce pure slop. Really it excels when used by someone with technical understanding. I envisage that in a decade companies that are rapidly producing AI apps and webapps now will be flooding the market with requests for professional developers to fix the issues they've created.
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u/deb-wev1553 3h ago
I just had a friend pay me to review his lovable application.
Just a quick review, 5 hours max.
I already found enough issues that need fixing, even before doing an indepth review.
What that tells me is, AI generated code will require manual review for any serious application.
For now I am not too worried, because people will still need skilled developers.
But I do recommend that you go more on the side of security.
Cyber Security will become increasingly more important an people will pay for it, that's what I see coming.
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u/ThePastoolio 3h ago
This is good advice. AI generated code will require manual review, yes, but not for very long.
The suggestion to focus on security is good.
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u/etthundra 3h ago
I'm worried about my future as well. I have however knowledge in C#/ReactJs. AI is making it difficult for me to find new jobs.
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u/klas-klattermus 3h ago
Keep learning, look into architecture and infrastructure and what problems exists there and how various solutions solve those issues so you can tell what solutions are best suited to your client's situation
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u/Dagoneth full-stack 3h ago
Full stack dev here, 20 years experience. Definitely leaning more to the front end.
I didn’t properly take AI up until earlier this year - I was very skeptical until a couple of contractor mates of mine convinced me to give it a proper go. Now it is my main tool.
Contrary to popular belief, using it properly to get good results requires you to have a solid foundation of knowledge in what you are building so you can challenge it on how it needs to build things out. Example: I’m currently building out a fully event-driven piece of semi-critical airport infrastructure using Claude. I still have to know how event sourcing works, the patterns, the anti-patterns, etc., to make sure it doesn’t run off and build the wrong thing. Once I have it nailed down, it writes the code.
Basically, the foundations are more important than ever. It’s a very keen junior engineer who has read all the documentation, but isn’t very wise. Embrace it, but learn what it is you need to be doing.
So what do you do with the extra time? Widen your horizon. When working on a product, I now spend more time in product research finding out what is most valuable, doing competitor analysis and presenting upcoming features back to the product manager. I get a lot of joy out of being able to deliver more value.
The job isn’t just writing code anymore. Even if you think AIs aren’t that good at it (but I can tell you that they are better than a lot of devs I’ve seen), they are getting better. If you don’t embrace it, at some point you will be left behind.
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u/LouieValkhof 3h ago
On the RAG / agents / vector DB list: you don't have to pick between that and full-stack, because most of that list is full-stack work.
We run a fair chunk of our studio's ops on agents now, and the model call was never the part that ate the time. It was a job that hangs and needs a timeout, a login session that expires and has to tell someone instead of failing silently, a check that blocks bad output before it goes out, a log you can actually read the next morning. That's backend and plumbing, and a decent Next.js dev already knows half of it.
So I'd build one small thing that calls an LLM and has to survive real use for a few weeks, then spend most of your time on what breaks. That one project covers both of your lists.
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u/Strict-Marsupial-674 4h ago
i was in same boat few months ago, the AI stuff looks scary when you watch youtube demos but real work is way messier than that
most companies still run on spaghetti code from 2015, AI cant fix that without someone who understand what actually happening. i started learning backend properly (node + postgres, nothing fancy) and my confidence went up a lot, now i see AI as tool not replacement
dont chase every new buzzword, pick one thing and get good at it. fullstack with next.js is fine for now, the AI hype will settle down and companies will still need people who can debug at 3am when the bot hallucinates something stupid
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 3h ago
Delusional. Ai can absolutely fix spaghetti code from 2015 on its own.
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u/Squigglificated 2h ago
It can. Knowing whether it has or hasn't often requires some experience.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 2h ago
So here is the thing. It’s two-pronged right now.
You have entry-level and junior who perform worse than just getting AI to do it with like a few mins of a senior or
experienced engineer prompting.And then on top of that. You have a fiercely competitive market. With the above point lay offs and number reductions.
Combine both together. There are fewer junior roles available in the market. And more experienced engineers are available to compete.
The market is rough. And some junior saying AI can do what they can do is just delusional.
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u/drifterpreneurs 3h ago
Delusional is the vibe coders who think they're full-stack devs now because AI.
Have you ever researched what the bench marks are regarding vibe coding?
Only a simple minded dev would think it's okay to let Ai perform such a job knowning Ai has many flaws.
Do you think Ai can do everything? I bet your vibe coded apps lack security, bugs, repeated code over & over and much more wrong with them.
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u/Jamiemufu full-stack 2h ago
Who said I was a vibe coder? 10 YOE. AI can do everything. It’s as good as the person using it. Or just better than entry levels out of the box.
Which is what both the OP and the person I replied to are. Literally months of experience.
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u/maheshwhartech 2h ago
I would not abandon React or Next.js just because AI can generate code. I would use AI to build faster while getting better at the parts that are harder to fake: debugging production issues, understanding databases, authentication, security and making sensible architectural decisions.
A generated app can look finished long before it is reliable. If you can take a feature from an idea to deployment, understand why it breaks and fix it without blindly trusting the output, that is a much stronger skill set than chasing every new AI framework.
Build one complete application and learn the reasoning behind every important decision.
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u/TekiDeki 2h ago
I went through this exact anxiety a while back, so I'll share what helped me. Stop trying to keep up with everything. You'll never catch every new AI tool, and it's not what gets people hired.
What helped me was picking one project and taking it all the way to production. I used an LLM in it, but the part that taught me the most was everything around it: a request that hung and needed a timeout, a login session that expired, output I couldn't trust until I added checks, and logs I had to dig through the next morning. That was real backend work, and it's where your React and Next.js knowledge already gets you a long way.
I'd also spend some time on backend basics (Postgres, auth, how a request really flows) and security, since that's where reviewing AI-generated code matters most. And honestly, your React skills aren't wasted. They're what let you tell whether the code the AI gave you is any good.
Be patient with yourself. Almost nobody feels ready, and the fact that you're thinking this carefully already puts you ahead of many people.
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u/Zeilar 2h ago
You need to transition to becoming an engineer. You can still specialize in e.g NextJS (as I do myself), but nowadays AI can write pretty much anything in NextJS that I could myself.
What AI cannot do as well as me (yet) is architecture, business decisions, infrastructure etc. I can understand what work I should prioritize, what tools I should use, what dependencies we should install. An AI can't tell me what video player to use in my new video platform app, that's something I need to look at and decide what suits me best.
An AI cannot take ownership of a domain, a product etc. It's too many variables, and AI doesn't reason in the way we do when making decisions. Just go ask ChatGPT to make you a fantasy draft in some game, in my experience it sucks at such tasks.
And obviously someone needs to review the AI output, and that's me (and you).
I think now it's very valuable to start learning about systems. Because at the end of the day, you need to be able to know what to prompt an AI, and when an AI is wrong.
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u/itzFinners 1h ago
As a self-taught React developer myself I've been learning more backend development recently. I've started learning Go to get a much better understanding of how http servers actually work. While it's been a struggle it's definitely opened my eyes to how much is hidden away when using Node for example. Also AI is amazing for documentation and explaining each step so use it to your advantage
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u/krolyat 1h ago
Learn how to use AI to your advantage and output faster whilst ensuring good code. It’s a tool. Not a replacement.
Also i dived into learning Swift and Swift UI and yeah sure AI can build what I want very quickly but I have no fucking clue how it’s built. So it’s better to learn and steer AI into teaching. Not replacing.
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u/Kregol91 54m ago
Lerne keine Sprache oder Frameworks mehr sondern lerne Architekturen und Stack Komponenten nicht im Sinne von dass du diese zu 100% beherrschst sondern dass du das für und wieder jeder Komponente und der SI Architektur Vorgaben geben kannst.
Ich denke damit wirst du das größte Potential rausholen.
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u/FluffySmiles 14m ago
Just gonna give you a little perspective here. There has always been, at least in the 39 years I’ve been in the game, something new go learn. The difference now is that it’s mandatory to expand your horizons and move beyond your comfort zone. The days of a predictable career path are gone. It happened so quickly not everyone realises the battle has been fought already.
The life of a freelance developer has always been staying one step ahead of the crowd.
Now it’s the turn of the wage slaves to join in the fun.
Don’t be scared. Embrace the chaos. There has never been this thing called a secure job. It never existed. It was always propaganda. Tech and other highly specialised skills had a premium on scarcity which is why high salaries and flexible standards.
And that is now history.
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u/UmbrellaTheorist 3m ago
Do freelance, there are TONS of regular stores who would love to have a website and sell online as well, but don't know how. You can make a bespoke solution for them. And you could do it relatively fast and cheap with AI.
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u/Trizzae 2m ago
I defined myself early in my career as a Java developer. I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t true. I’m an IT guy who had to get really good at learning on the fly and problem solving. You start to learn a lot of transferable skills and soft skills that will keep you employed. Syntax, language, frameworks, AI usage won’t matter. It’s been able to architect things, work on teams, and communicating to stakeholders and bosses.
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u/SirZazzzles 3h ago edited 3h ago
The great thing about AI is, you are no longer a next/React developer. With AI, You're a full stack developer specializing in react frontends. Leverage AI to build projects that span the entire stack. Get better at architecture, scaling and stability.
Your skills aren't useless, they compliment the broader capability this new tool gives you. Market yourself accordingly.