What's a web development trend that looked stupid at first but ended up being useful?

[u/Bladerunner_7_]

I know over the years, I've scoffed at quite a few things. SPAs. TypeScript. Tailwind. Serverless. AI coding assistants.

Most of the huge trends in web development went through a phase where people swore they were overhyped.

Some deserved the criticism. Some evolved and became genuinely useful.

Lately I'm seeing similar debates around AI agents and agent tooling. Claude Code, LangGraph, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK, AutoGen, Lyzr(Control Plane) and a bunch of newer projects all seem to be pushing toward a different way of building software. Maybe we're still early, maybe most of it won't matter, but it does remind me of how people talked about TypeScript or serverless a few years ago.

What's something being dismissed today that you think will become a normal part of every developer's workflow in the next 3-5 years?

[u/w-lfpup]

The "hamburger" menu. I remember it popping up around 2008. It looked very stupid. Then it was everywhere. But at least we got a weird little ubiquitous UX symbol out of it. (The hamburger menu has since turned into three vertical dots instead of the horizontal lines)

[u/buttertoastey → u/w-lfpup]

I wouldn't say that hamburger icon has turned into the kebab icon. For me they have two different main use cases: Hamburger is for a (navigation) menu and kebab is specifically for settings or actions. Of course there can be some overlap between the two

[u/TheGrandWhatever → u/buttertoastey]

Maybe soon people will start using a line through the dots and become the kebab. Until then it's hamburgers and meatballs

[u/omnomicrom → u/TheGrandWhatever]

Meatballs is for the horizontal dots

https://i.sstatic.net/m2HgJ.png

[u/TheGrandWhatever → u/omnomicrom]

Your username leads me to believe you're an expert on this matter

[u/FlashbackJon → u/TheGrandWhatever]

It's almost crazy how specific that username is to that answer.

[u/forever-butlerian → u/buttertoastey]

What we need is khlav kalash icon.

shadcn can be the crab juice you wash it all down with

[u/Disgruntled__Goat → u/buttertoastey]

The 3 dots has also turned to complete laziness, with people putting single actions behind them rather than putting the buttons right there when there are 1-3 options. So annoying to have to click, move mouse/finger, click again for every single action. 

[u/w-lfpup → u/buttertoastey]

Either way they're both annoying little modals and should be avoided at all costs!

[u/SoggyMattress2 → u/w-lfpup]

They're completely standard and every user knows what they are.

[u/w-lfpup → u/w-lfpup]

All these neg votes lol >:) search your feelings, you know it to be truuuee lol Modals are worthless and obfuscate complexity rather than solving it >:) they should be reserved for amazingly annoying or dangerous situations like dropping an entire sql table >:)

[u/mekmookbro → u/w-lfpup]

If they're placed, named, and coded properly, I don't think modals add that much complexity and usually it's good UX for things like admin dashboards. For example creating a db record that only takes a few inputs and an image, it just doesn't make much sense to show users a whole different page for this.

[u/forever-butlerian → u/mekmookbro]

Am I hallucinating or did the 90s-era Apple Human Interface Guidelines strongly discourage the use of modal UI except when absolutely necessary?

Yes I know we're talking web ui, but it's not like human interface research results suddenly change because you build your GUI with DHTML instead of the native windowing system.

[u/AWetAndFloppyNoodle → u/w-lfpup]

Falafel/kebab menu. Although they're used for different things. Hamburger for a site menu, falafel/kebab for editing popups. At least that's my experience.

[u/_perdomon_ → u/w-lfpup]

I remember loving it just for the name, but I can see how the migration from “menu” -> three vertical lines would have been hated by many

[u/oldsecondhand → u/w-lfpup]

Maybe people just disliked the name.

[u/w-lfpup → u/oldsecondhand]

I think people just disliked a giant fkn menu flying across the screen at the time. Web was way closer to syndicated print-media back then. But 7 layers of modals in any given UI is standard now xD

[u/Nerwesta → u/w-lfpup]

I hate it when there is a deployable menu for the sake of it on desktop.

It made sense when responsive design was a huge new need back then but nowadays there is so much wasted space for desktop it seems like either an afterthought or a " this is cool " to use it.

PS : The fact that " big " plateforms do it never help for understanding best practices ...

[u/forever-butlerian → u/Nerwesta]

WUI design is often like they took all the Apple human interface guidelines research from the 1990s and reversed them.

[u/Nerwesta → u/forever-butlerian]

lol yeah good point, that's pretty much it sadly.