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Is the field of web development dying?

zooboole

Published By zooboole

In recent days we are noticing the sprout of an increasing number of tools making the creation of websites a breeze. Only yesterday we were talking of webmasters, and today nobody seems to remember them. Are we also risking to forget the front and back end engineers tomorrow?

I distinctively remember how the website development market was hot about ten to twenty years ago. Websites were priced at six figures and above. It required alien-skills to build a website. Is it a surprise today to hear people price their website project like a chicken leg.

Who is to blame? It's the web developers themselves. We have looked for easy and fast ways to develop the entire time. We wanted innovation and progress as well. Then we kept on pushing and making things as easy and accessible as possible to the neophytes. We have increased our gospel outreach by launching incredible free educational websites to teach millions how to do it themselves. To close the whole thing we built platforms to help anyone to create their website with simple mouse clicks and some drag-and-drops.

I don't hate this. And we did well. I mean, we did so well that the field has moved to its next milestone ‐the reason why most developers might think that the field is dying.

Originally the web was designed to help visualize documents on the internet. But as we continued to work hard on its various technologies, it started morphing into the applications platform. That is where we are heading now. Those who think the field is dying failed to perceive that transformation. We have passed the stage of simple web presence with some web pages. We are at the stage of web applications. Look at applications like Gmail, Slack, Discord, and most modern crypto-currency trading platforms. They are beyond what can be seen as a simple website. They constitute a whole different level of pushing the web technologies and the browsers to the next level. Not surprising that we have seen a whole new level of software business models such as SaaS, PaaS, etc. The game has changed. And talking of games, can you also notice that even 3D games are available online today?

The web is maturing continuously. So, the six-figures I mentioned above are still possible and we even take more than that. As a web developer, you need to start paying attention to this transformation. It will help you know the various types of jobs to take and how deep each has to be. Plus, you would also know how to craft your projects. And this is the time to hang the website developer title and bear the honorable title of a software engineer with pride. The same goes for entrepreneurs, you need to understand now that having a portal displaying your company logo and some text written by the secretary would not be enough to sell your business. You must think of implementing your service online just like you do it in real life. Most clients get surprised when I ask them "what do you want your website to do for you?". I ask this question because I expect you to ask me to build a service instead of simple plain text pages.