Are you a freshly minted web developer and worried about your career due to advancements in AI? Well, what do you think would happen if a tool can accomplish what takes you days in just a few minutes? For instance, did you know that you can use an AI tool to seek answers to your questions or even write a blog? Imagine spending a couple of minutes writing a 1000-word article instead of four hours.

So, what does this mean for software developers? Do web developers, especially the newly minted ones, have to worry about the future of their careers? Can ChatGPT replace them and do the job that they do?

Well, if you are a freshly minted web developer, you do not have to worry about ChatGPT. Instead, you need to find ways of making web development easier using this innovation. What do you think ChatGPT means for you?

Why You Should Not Worry About ChatGPT

We all go to school and work very hard to have a bright future for ourselves and our families. Imagine after all the hard work, someone comes with an innovation that can render you jobless! What can you do? Does this make sense when someone says that AI is destroying humanity?

Well, you can find mistakes with ChatGPT. Web developers have reported getting information that is not factually correct, especially when it comes to web development libraries. Others have complained of ChatGPT creating libraries that do not even exist.

Due to the nature of the information used when training ChatGPT, you might even be referred to web programming libraries that are no longer in use. This tells you that ChatGPT cannot do what a human can do.

So, why should you not worry about ChatGPT, especially for newly minted web developers?

• ChatGPT cannot understand the practical and emotional requirements of humans.
• It cannot differentiate between correct and incorrect information that it generates. In addition, it cannot tell users that it does not trust the information that it provides.
• ChatGPT cannot understand real-world issues and what keeps the world moving.
• It uses historical information, meaning that you might find it using outdated or web programming libraries that have already been retired.

What Does This Mean For Web Developers?

ChatGPT might not be capable of doing what web developers do today, but what about five to ten years down the line? Imagine a situation where you have spent four years studying for a degree in Computer Science and specializing in web development.

You might even have spent more time learning web development online and even signing up for Bootcamps to hone your skills. However, a few years down the line, your competitor in the market is an AI innovation like ChatGPT. What would you feel?

Well, if you have just joined the market after honing your web development skills, this is not something you need to worry about. Look at the low and no-code software development approach that has existed for many years.

Even though it was expected that this approach (together with others) will get rid of software developers, they have never been able to do that. One of the main reasons for this is the complexity that comes with software development.

For instance, for you to be a successful web developer, you need to worry about a couple of things, not just writing code.

You need to think about;

• Delivery speed including project plans and deadlines.
• Testing and quality of your web development projects.
• Meeting both user (customer) and business needs.
• Maintenance of your web development projects.
• Scaling of your projects according to the number of users you have.
• Web security and performance.

Since ChatGPT is not human and does not have any human emotions, it means that it cannot do any of the things discussed above.

In addition, ChatGPT can only generate code from what it has encountered before. This means that it cannot evaluate whether the code is correct, well-documented, free from errors, meets business requirements, or lacks security vulnerabilities. This means that as a web developer, you can use ChatGPT to improve your coding skills. At the moment, it cannot replace you.

Wrapping Up

The next few years are going to see more innovations powered by AI that might threaten some of our careers. However, as a web developer, this is not something you need to be worried about at the moment.

Instead, you should look at this as an opportunity for you to become even better, especially if you are a newly minted web developer. Use ChatGPT to improve your skills, as a Google alternative, and to shorten the time you use when working on a project.