Part 1: The Easy Parts
- Frameworks & Generators
- Next.js, SvelteKit, Remix → instant routing, API endpoints, server rendering.
- AI can scaffold pages, hooks, and CRUD quickly.
- Deployment & Hosting
- Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare → one-click deploys, serverless scaling out of the box.
- No need to manage servers or containers to ship an MVP.
- Plug-and-Play Services
- Authentication (Clerk, Auth0), payments (Stripe), DBs (Supabase, PlanetScale).
- Developers can ship demos and side projects in hours.
Part 2: The Hard Parts That Still Exist
1. 3rd-Party Integrations
- APIs are inconsistent, rate-limited, or poorly documented.
- Edge cases and error handling can consume more time than writing the app itself.
- Example: OAuth flows or embedding a payment provider.
2. Security
3. WebSockets & Real-Time Apps
- AI scaffolding can’t solve the complexity of state sync, reconnections, scaling.
- Handling thousands of concurrent connections across regions is still tough.
- Example: chat apps, collaborative editors, live dashboards.
4. Complex CSS & Design Systems
- Frameworks don’t design your UI for you.
- Responsive layouts, accessibility, and advanced animations remain human-intensive.
- Maintaining consistency in large teams (design tokens, theming) is still a challenge.
- Example: building a polished dashboard that works across devices.
5. Complex Debugging
- Debugging distributed systems, async bugs, race conditions, or performance regressions.
- Logs, observability, and CI/CD pipelines introduce complexity not solved by AI.
- Example: production bug that only happens under load or with specific inputs.
6. Data & Scaling
- Schema design, database migrations, query optimization, and caching strategies.
- Trade-offs between cost vs performance still need human judgment.
7. Novel Features & Differentiation
- CRUD is solved; the challenge is creating something unique.
- Competitive advantage comes from innovation, not scaffolding.
8. Marketing & Growth
- Technical ability doesn’t equal user adoption.
- Marketing, distribution, and community remain uphill battles.
9. Team & Process
- Collaboration, reviews, CI/CD, observability, QA.
- Tools help, but scaling humans working together is never easy.
10. Compliance & Maintenance
- GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, financial compliance.
- Long-term updates, deprecations, and vendor lock-in still add friction.
Part 3: Why This Shift Is a Good Thing
- We can get to the real problems faster (security, scale, value).
- Removes “gatekeeping” around trivial tasks (spinning up a server, CRUD boilerplate).
- Developers can focus on building resilient, innovative software.
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