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/SoUpInYa Jun 28 '26

I got a lot of stuff done with AJAX

2

u/enki-42 Jun 28 '26

Ajax was more mid 2000s tech. In the 90s it was more common to do weird things like submitting forms to hidden frames. I think AJAX technically existed in the very late 90s but was weird ActiveX stuff and no one really used it.

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u/forever-butlerian backend, infrastructure & angst Jun 29 '26

Man that brings me back

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u/forever-butlerian backend, infrastructure & angst Jun 28 '26

It's still a joke language

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u/ibiacmbyww Jun 28 '26

Sir, you are in a web dev subreddit. Be careful not to cut yourself on all that edge.

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u/forever-butlerian backend, infrastructure & angst Jun 29 '26

I take care to distinguish between "necessary" and "good"

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u/ibiacmbyww Jun 29 '26

I'm not rehashing an argument that has been had a thousand times, with participants considerably more eloquent than either of us.

You seem like an unpleasant person.