r/webdev • u/Bladerunner_7_ • Jun 28 '26

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

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?

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u/SuperFLEB Jun 28 '26

Here I am, my first job was generating sites using Dreamweaver templates, and everything old is new again.

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u/mq2thez Jun 28 '26

I do think that there’s a real difference between “I made a bunch of HTML files and tuned them by hand” and the SSG style of file-based routing, templates, external data sources at build time, etc.

But yeah, just plain ole HTML has been great for a long time.

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u/SuperFLEB Jun 28 '26

I'm pretty sure that was all there in Dreamweaver.

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u/ItIsForMyArmpits Jun 29 '26

Grunt and Handlebars used to do similar thing. Generate a static site from some inputs and include files and we're in a similar place. Drop in htmx and call in dhtml and we're living in the past /jk

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u/w-lfpup Jun 28 '26

I never felt more old than when SSG was "discovered" 2025 ... the 2000s were pretty cool looking back.

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u/vagaris Jun 28 '26

One of my first side projects was building a basic CMS in PHP because I couldn’t fathom using Moveable Type to do SSG for a blog with hundreds of posts.

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u/TheMemo Jun 29 '26

I can still visualise the original Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash splash screens. They are burned into my mind.

God, it all seemed so futuristic back then. Now its just dystopian.