I literally learned to program by right clicking on web pages and selecting view source. I am not classically trained as a programmer. I did not go to university. I just began reverse engineering what others built towards the end of the last century, and kept doing it in this century until I knew what the hell I was doing.
During our Write Through It conversation the other day, Sue Smith and I talked about how this type of “view source” engineering is dead. Even when you can view source a web page, things have gotten much more complicated and noisy, and reverse engineering is rarely straightforward. But that is when you are just on a web page, and the same is even more obfuscated when you are operating in a chat interface that is driven by artificial intelligence.
Anytime I look at the source code behind a web page I often just end up scratching my head. Web pages are mostly JavaScript these days, and cobbled together by a dizzying number of API calls. They also tend to really work overtime to obfuscate things so that they aren’t scraped. When engaging with the web and applications via an AI powered chat interface, you are left without any source of visibility into what the hell is going on, and this is definitely by design. Keeping you believing in the magic behind the chat interface for each of the AI magic doorways.
AI is having a profound effect on the next generation of developers and builders. This doesn’t even touch on the complexity that has emerged across web sites and applications. If you can’t view source your way forward into a career like I did, what does that mean for people’s futures, but also the impact they might have had on business sectors and government agencies. I’ve had an impact. I can confidently say I’ve positively impacted multiple companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies. What will the future be like when people like me can’t find their way forward?
It all makes me worry for the future. I take pride in my websites being mostly HTML, with sensible JavaScript. I have long resisted the complexity that has come with many web frameworks. I am working hard to resist the complexity that AI-driven development can bring. I do this for my own sanity. But I also want people to be able to view source on my websites. I am fine with people scraping my websites. I feel you have to pay this stuff forward. I hope people are learning from what I build. I wish more people approached web development the way I do. I am not very proud of the web we have built. I think we can do better. I think we have to do better, otherwise the future is pretty dark online. I think people are already getting pretty sick of it and checking out.
