When it comes down to design and art, I like to do everything manually because I hate AI-generated content. I make my own 3D models, own animations for videos, etc.

Now I am working on my personal portfolio, and I am using AI like Claude to help me with setting up my project, like, for example, the library Three.js. While I am very happy with the current result and how I design and redirect AI, I feel like a hypocrite to be so negative to people that use AI-generated content while using AI for programming myself.

The reason I post this here is to ask how others feel about this and what advice they would give me.

*Update*

I want to thank the people for the very insightful responses to my question. While I am working on my website, I want to understand and change as much of the code myself.

I'm a frontend developer/designer with experience in the past building and selling largely SaaS software.

That was before AI as we know it, and I'm starting to feel numb to the amount of people I who've become a developer overnight tell me about the new app 'they built.'

Like any developer I had several ideas stewing for years and I nearly took the leap on a few of them, and when I see the landscape like it is now half of me thinks 'I'm so glad I didn't take huge risks and build X as it would have just been copied now anyway' and the other half says 'I wish I got in before everyone was developing apps in a few minutes.'

I'm curious for those who DID build something prior to this shift, are you glad you got in then, or have these changes made all the time spent not worth it?

Thanks!

So I do not really have much understanding of web development and back end but when you save an instagram page as an html from its website. It doesn't save the way instagram looks, rather it shows a representation of the UI and subtext behind images (not the images themself) like the image shared above.

I am also more curious how it reads the image and tries to classify it, and why something like the subtext "May be an image of ----" is in the backend when you do not see it in the interface itself. I am curious of the process itself if someone is kind enough to explain itself.

Hello guys, a little while ago I found some other teenagers on here that were looking for a backend developer for a website, and I volunteered this I have some knowledge with node.js and those concepts, and I've built a full stack website (basic backend) with it. Here is the github because it will be relevant later: https://github.com/norrie-adams/EVS-Small-Engine-Repair-Site

However, I do not think this is like a website that could properly support like actual people. And that was part of the reason I stopped building it (I also just lost interest). But this is a thing where other people are relying on me to build something functional (or at least more functional then this site). So I just want to know, what did I do wrong with this project, and what could I improve upon for next time?

Sorry if this isn't super clear, but I appreciate any advice you can give me :)

Do you just wing it and use screenshots for inspiration or do you use a design principles md file where you mention all the design principles like the fonts, colors, dark mode colors, graphs, infographics, etc.

Here's roughly the process we've landed on. Any change touching a function called from more than a couple other places gets flagged for a wider blast radius check before it reaches canary. The canary stage compares actual runtime behavior against the previous version, not just error rates, since a function can run clean and still behave wrong. We lean on hud for that part, it compares each function against how it behaved before the deploy.

That second part matters most, since most of what's bitten us hasn't been a crash, it's been subtle behavioral drift that technically runs fine. Works best with good baseline data on prior behavior, worse when the function's too new to have one. How would you improve this?

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I'd love to hear what you think!

https://getforma.dev a TypeScript framework with no V8/Node on the server and no Virtual DOM on the client. It compiles TSX into a binary format called FMIR at build time so a Rust server can render SSR HTML directly, and only ships tiny signal islands to the browser. I’ve been using it to build apps with AI lately and it seems because the contract between TS and Rust is so strict, it's been ridiculously fast and efficient. Not bloat.

Do web developers not get the resources to understand any banking concepts? Here's a picture of the column order of pending wire requests you inputted. Why would you put amount in the last column and date in the middle? They recently updated their website and the columns feel like they're randomized, making it harder for us to review our entries as they changed the order. FYI I work in finance/acctg but I previously had a year of web dev experience looking into as a career few years back, so I have an eye for these things. Do non tech companies not heavily invest in their IT team, perhaps etc?

There’s a new one every week. Most people try them and drop them after a few days.

Which one are you still using months later, and what’s the one thing it does better than the rest?

So a few of my friends have stopped using Figma. They go straight to production and make changes there.

When I first heard this I was honestly confused. Like where do you try things out? Where do you compare two versions?

Then I saw what they were building. The landing page feels like one product, the settings page feels like another, the dashboard feels like a third. Buttons are different, spacing is different, hover is different on every page. There’s no uniformity, no design system, nothing.

So I asked them how they’re doing it, and the answer is always “I use this AI skill” or “I bought this skill pack”. People are actually selling these now. Skill packs, prompt bundles, paid repos. And there are a lot of free ones on GitHub too.

It doesn’t make sense to me at all. How will you learn anything? And how will you polish the product if it looks different every time you generate it?

When I brought this up, someone said just add a memory file so it stays consistent.

Okay, but then how will you make changes? You never decided why the button has that radius or why it’s that grey. The AI decided. So when something needs fixing, you don’t know what to fix. You just prompt again and hope.

And now there are courses around this too. The idea is learn this design vocabulary, tell it to the AI, and you’ll get good UI. They call it beginner friendly. But then you see what’s inside and it’s stuff like:

• spring easing, stiffness, damping
• optical alignment
• vertical rhythm
• morphing transitions
• 60-30-10 colour rule
• type scale ratios

If a senior buys it, it’s fine. They already know what damping feels like, they know what they’re skipping.

But a beginner has never played with an easing curve and seen it go from cheap to smooth. Never moved something 2px and felt it finally sit right. They’re just memorising words and giving them to the AI. You can know the word damping and still have no idea when the bounce is too much.

Selling that as beginner friendly feels like a deceiving thing to me. You learn these words after you’ve actually done the work, not before.

Also design is never one try. I go through so many versions before something feels right. In Figma that’s easy, I put five versions side by side and throw four away. In production code every change costs time, so whatever comes out first just ships.

I’m not trying to dunk on my friends, they’re good at what they do. And I get why these skills are tempting. But paid or free, they’re doing the exact part you’re supposed to learn.

If you’re using one, just try building one page without it. Pick the hover, the spacing, the colours yourself, even if it’s bad. That’s literally how you get better at this.

Anyone else seeing this or is it just me? just my thoughts 🤷

Interestingly having played around with macOS 27.2 and using Sidecar on an iPad for touch inputs, it looks like Safari isn’t going to send proper touch events like Windows touchscreens do. Best we get is mousedowns with no buttons=0.

Even worse testing in Chrome, all we get are scroll events. That’s fine for panning but if you want to do anything custom like drawing, dragging etc you’re SoL unless you want to try detecting these off heuristics. Maybe they’ll improve the situation before it’s in people’s hands, but curious to hear what other devs with complex web apps are planning on doing.

Tengo un proyecto app web jsf , jakarta +open liberty etc

Me pregunto si me podrían ayudar dándome opiniones sobre el

I work on 2-3 different projects throughout the week (different clients, different tech stacks), and I've noticed my productivity tanks for the first 30-45 minutes after switching contexts. It's like my brain is still thinking in the patterns of the previous project.

Some things I've tried: - Taking a short walk between switches - Keeping detailed notes about where I left off - Dedicating full days to single projects when possible

The notes help the most, but I'm curious what workflows other devs have developed for this. Do you have any rituals or techniques that help you get back into flow faster when jumping between projects?

Especially interested in hearing from freelancers or consultants who deal with this regularly.