AI and Web Development: Hype or Reality

Rate this content
Bookmark

In this talk, we'll take a look at the growing intersection of AI and web development. There's a lot of buzz around the potential uses of AI in writing, understanding, and debugging code, and integrating it into our applications is becoming easier and more affordable. But there are also questions about the future of AI in app development, and whether it will make us more productive or take our jobs.


There's a lot of excitement, skepticism, and concern about the rise of AI in web development. We'll explore the real potential for AI in creating new web development frameworks, and separate fact from fiction.


So if you're interested in the future of web development and the role of AI in it, this talk is for you. Oh, and this talk abstract was written by AI after I gave it several of my unstructured thoughts.

This talk has been presented at JSNation 2023, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

FAQ

Wes Boss mentioned several AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, CLI tools like Fig, and various chat apps that help with code generation and providing coding suggestions in real-time.

AI enhances developer productivity by being faster than traditional search methods, context-aware, and directly solving the specific problems faced by the developer.

Wes Boss is a Canadian with Dutch heritage who specializes in creating web development courses. He also runs a highly awarded podcast called Syntax.

AI can assist with generating dummy data, writing functions, generating CSS selectors, writing regular expressions, converting callback code to promises, and creating classes from functions.

Yes, AI can be used to transcribe podcasts, generate detailed summaries, and create succinct bullet points. It can also format outputs like JSON and help manage and organize podcast content efficiently.

Wes Boss notes the limitations of AI with large datasets, such as a one-hour podcast surpassing the token limits of models like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. He discusses the need to condense input data to fit within these limits for effective processing.

Wes Boss is optimistic about the future role of AI in web development, highlighting its ability to boost productivity, improve code quality, and enable developers to build more complex and innovative applications.

Wes Bos
Wes Bos
24 min
01 Jun, 2023

Comments

Sign in or register to post your comment.
Video Summary and Transcription
This talk explores the use of AI in web development, including tools like GitHub Copilot and Fig for CLI commands. AI can generate boilerplate code, provide context-aware solutions, and generate dummy data. It can also assist with CSS selectors and regexes, and be integrated into applications. AI is used to enhance the podcast experience by transcribing episodes and providing JSON data. The talk also discusses formatting AI output, crafting requests, and analyzing embeddings for similarity.

1. Introduction to AI in Web Development

Short description:

Thanks for coming! I'm Wes Boss, a Canadian with Dutch blood. I make web dev courses and host the Syntax podcast. This talk is about coding and building with AI models. AI gives developers a boost in productivity and code quality. Let's discuss the mediums we use AI as web developers, like GitHub Copilot and CLI.

Thanks, everybody, for coming out. I'm super stoked about this talk. My name is Wes Boss. I'm a Canadian, however, I have 100% Dutch blood. So if you want to come up after and teach me some sort of Dutch word, I would actually really like that. I make web dev courses. I have a highly awarded podcast called Syntax, which I'm pretty stoked about. And this talk today is about coding with AI as well as actually building stuff with these AI models.

And I want to start off with a few things. I know there's a couple of you in the room are like, oh, this jerk off that's talking about AI right now, right? I have nothing here to sell you. I don't work for some AI company. I don't have any crazy stuff. Well, if you're that stoked about it, I might try to sell you something later. So don't get too excited. I'm not a huckster for trying to push it. I'm not a Web3 crypto guy that figured out it didn't work out. I'm just stoked about a lot of this AI stuff that's going on, and I'm here just to tell you stuff that is cool.

So AI, I think it gives us developers a massive boost in productivity, code quality, as well as the kind of stuff that we're able to build. We're still figuring a lot of this stuff out. This is just, like, six months a year of things going crazy. But I don't think it's going anywhere. I always compare it to the crypto stuff, and I'm like, oh, I'll keep my eye on that and stuff like that. And that stuff was never really that useful to me, but this stuff is just like, wow, I can't stop using this stuff in my day to day.

So let's talk about some of the mediums that we use AI as web developer. So probably the biggest one. Who here is using GitHub Copilot or something like that, right? Yeah, probably about half the room here. And it's super handy. As you're writing code, it kind of just says, is this what you want? And you hit it. We also have CLI. Oh, shit, there's supposed to be a video there.

2. AI in Web Development Tools

Short description:

Imagine using GitHub Copilot or Fig for CLI commands and chat apps for quick answers. Voice input and prompts are being explored. AI can generate boilerplate code and provide context-aware solutions. It solves your problem directly. For example, generating dummy data is super handy.

Just imagine something like GitHub Copilot or Fig where you have a CLI command and it gives you access and then shows you what all the CLI commands are. It's pretty handy. There's chat apps which probably a lot of us have also interfaces with where you just ask it, how do I do X, Y, and Z? There's pull request templates now. You spend all this time working on your code and then you have to create a pull request. It's sometimes hard to figure out all that good stuff is.

And there's so many different experiments that we have. There's voice which GitHub Copilot voice which is kind of cool. It's huge for accessibility, but it's also kind of interesting, is your voice a new input? You get your mouse, you get your keyboard, is your voice a new input? We don't know. We're experimenting with it. There's brushes where you can just have to click a button, make it accessible, document this, add types. Prompts as the new syntax. So there's a lot of talk around, like, do we write code anymore or do we just write prompts? And obviously not yet. But there's people trying to explore maybe that is something. Maybe it's not. Boilerplate generation for these things. Do you need boilerplate generators anymore or can AI do that where it's a little more well-suited?

So like why do you want to use these types of things? So first, it's faster than Google. It's context-aware, which is really the game-changer, is it knows about the code that you're writing. It knows about the types of your project. It knows about, like, what tabs you have open at the time. And all of that context really helps when you're trying to find an answer. It solves your problem. It doesn't solve somebody else's problem and you can't say, oh, this dude on StackOverflow solved the problem this way. How do I, like, apply that to what my problem is? It goes directly for your problem. So let's look at some examples. Dummy data. Generating dummy data is super handy. So this is, ah, shoot. What's going on with the... Hold on. This is not gonna be good if this doesn't work.

Check out more articles and videos

We constantly think of articles and videos that might spark Git people interest / skill us up or help building a stellar career

Building a Voice-Enabled AI Assistant With Javascript
JSNation 2023JSNation 2023
21 min
Building a Voice-Enabled AI Assistant With Javascript
Top Content
This Talk discusses building a voice-activated AI assistant using web APIs and JavaScript. It covers using the Web Speech API for speech recognition and the speech synthesis API for text to speech. The speaker demonstrates how to communicate with the Open AI API and handle the response. The Talk also explores enabling speech recognition and addressing the user. The speaker concludes by mentioning the possibility of creating a product out of the project and using Tauri for native desktop-like experiences.
The Rise of the AI Engineer
React Summit US 2023React Summit US 2023
30 min
The Rise of the AI Engineer
Watch video: The Rise of the AI Engineer
The rise of AI engineers is driven by the demand for AI and the emergence of ML research and engineering organizations. Start-ups are leveraging AI through APIs, resulting in a time-to-market advantage. The future of AI engineering holds promising results, with a focus on AI UX and the role of AI agents. Equity in AI and the central problems of AI engineering require collective efforts to address. The day-to-day life of an AI engineer involves working on products or infrastructure and dealing with specialties and tools specific to the field.
Web Apps of the Future With Web AI
JSNation 2024JSNation 2024
32 min
Web Apps of the Future With Web AI
Web AI in JavaScript allows for running machine learning models client-side in a web browser, offering advantages such as privacy, offline capabilities, low latency, and cost savings. Various AI models can be used for tasks like background blur, text toxicity detection, 3D data extraction, face mesh recognition, hand tracking, pose detection, and body segmentation. JavaScript libraries like MediaPipe LLM inference API and Visual Blocks facilitate the use of AI models. Web AI is in its early stages but has the potential to revolutionize web experiences and improve accessibility.
The Ai-Assisted Developer Workflow: Build Faster and Smarter Today
JSNation US 2024JSNation US 2024
31 min
The Ai-Assisted Developer Workflow: Build Faster and Smarter Today
AI is transforming software engineering by using agents to help with coding. Agents can autonomously complete tasks and make decisions based on data. Collaborative AI and automation are opening new possibilities in code generation. Bolt is a powerful tool for troubleshooting, bug fixing, and authentication. Code generation tools like Copilot and Cursor provide support for selecting models and codebase awareness. Cline is a useful extension for website inspection and testing. Guidelines for coding with agents include defining requirements, choosing the right model, and frequent testing. Clear and concise instructions are crucial in AI-generated code. Experienced engineers are still necessary in understanding architecture and problem-solving. Energy consumption insights and sustainability are discussed in the Talk.
Code coverage with AI
TestJS Summit 2023TestJS Summit 2023
8 min
Code coverage with AI
Codium is a generative AI assistant for software development that offers code explanation, test generation, and collaboration features. It can generate tests for a GraphQL API in VS Code, improve code coverage, and even document tests. Codium allows analyzing specific code lines, generating tests based on existing ones, and answering code-related questions. It can also provide suggestions for code improvement, help with code refactoring, and assist with writing commit messages.
Building the AI for Athena Crisis
JS GameDev Summit 2023JS GameDev Summit 2023
37 min
Building the AI for Athena Crisis
Join Christoph from Nakazawa Tech in building the AI for Athena Crisis, a game where the AI performs actions just like a player. Learn about the importance of abstractions, primitives, and search algorithms in building an AI for a video game. Explore the architecture of Athena Crisis, which uses immutable persistent data structures and optimistic updates. Discover how to implement AI behaviors and create a class for the AI. Find out how to analyze units, assign weights, and prioritize actions based on the game state. Consider the next steps in building the AI and explore the possibility of building an AI for a real-time strategy game.

Workshops on related topic

AI on Demand: Serverless AI
DevOps.js Conf 2024DevOps.js Conf 2024
163 min
AI on Demand: Serverless AI
Top Content
Featured WorkshopFree
Nathan Disidore
Nathan Disidore
In this workshop, we discuss the merits of serverless architecture and how it can be applied to the AI space. We'll explore options around building serverless RAG applications for a more lambda-esque approach to AI. Next, we'll get hands on and build a sample CRUD app that allows you to store information and query it using an LLM with Workers AI, Vectorize, D1, and Cloudflare Workers.
AI for React Developers
React Advanced 2024React Advanced 2024
142 min
AI for React Developers
Featured Workshop
Eve Porcello
Eve Porcello
Knowledge of AI tooling is critical for future-proofing the careers of React developers, and the Vercel suite of AI tools is an approachable on-ramp. In this course, we’ll take a closer look at the Vercel AI SDK and how this can help React developers build streaming interfaces with JavaScript and Next.js. We’ll also incorporate additional 3rd party APIs to build and deploy a music visualization app.
Topics:- Creating a React Project with Next.js- Choosing a LLM- Customizing Streaming Interfaces- Building Routes- Creating and Generating Components - Using Hooks (useChat, useCompletion, useActions, etc)
Leveraging LLMs to Build Intuitive AI Experiences With JavaScript
JSNation 2024JSNation 2024
108 min
Leveraging LLMs to Build Intuitive AI Experiences With JavaScript
Featured Workshop
Roy Derks
Shivay Lamba
2 authors
Today every developer is using LLMs in different forms and shapes, from ChatGPT to code assistants like GitHub CoPilot. Following this, lots of products have introduced embedded AI capabilities, and in this workshop we will make LLMs understandable for web developers. And we'll get into coding your own AI-driven application. No prior experience in working with LLMs or machine learning is needed. Instead, we'll use web technologies such as JavaScript, React which you already know and love while also learning about some new libraries like OpenAI, Transformers.js
Llms Workshop: What They Are and How to Leverage Them
React Summit 2024React Summit 2024
66 min
Llms Workshop: What They Are and How to Leverage Them
Featured Workshop
Nathan Marrs
Haris Rozajac
2 authors
Join Nathan in this hands-on session where you will first learn at a high level what large language models (LLMs) are and how they work. Then dive into an interactive coding exercise where you will implement LLM functionality into a basic example application. During this exercise you will get a feel for key skills for working with LLMs in your own applications such as prompt engineering and exposure to OpenAI's API.
After this session you will have insights around what LLMs are and how they can practically be used to improve your own applications.
Table of contents: - Interactive demo implementing basic LLM powered features in a demo app- Discuss how to decide where to leverage LLMs in a product- Lessons learned around integrating with OpenAI / overview of OpenAI API- Best practices for prompt engineering- Common challenges specific to React (state management :D / good UX practices)
Working With OpenAI and Prompt Engineering for React Developers
React Advanced 2023React Advanced 2023
98 min
Working With OpenAI and Prompt Engineering for React Developers
Top Content
Workshop
Richard Moss
Richard Moss
In this workshop we'll take a tour of applied AI from the perspective of front end developers, zooming in on the emerging best practices when it comes to working with LLMs to build great products. This workshop is based on learnings from working with the OpenAI API from its debut last November to build out a working MVP which became PowerModeAI (A customer facing ideation and slide creation tool).
In the workshop they'll be a mix of presentation and hands on exercises to cover topics including:
- GPT fundamentals- Pitfalls of LLMs- Prompt engineering best practices and techniques- Using the playground effectively- Installing and configuring the OpenAI SDK- Approaches to working with the API and prompt management- Implementing the API to build an AI powered customer facing application- Fine tuning and embeddings- Emerging best practice on LLMOps
Building AI Applications for the Web
React Day Berlin 2023React Day Berlin 2023
98 min
Building AI Applications for the Web
Workshop
Roy Derks
Roy Derks
Today every developer is using LLMs in different forms and shapes. Lots of products have introduced embedded AI capabilities, and in this workshop you’ll learn how to build your own AI application. No experience in building LLMs or machine learning is needed. Instead, we’ll use web technologies such as JavaScript, React and GraphQL which you already know and love.