I just got back from my vacation which, like 99% of Polish people, I spent in Croatia. Dobar dan! 🇭🇷
I've got a really fun article in my head right now, but it needs a bit of research before I can publish it, so that'll be coming next week. In the meantime, let's do something much lighter.
BTW, a small update. I said that FrontKon would be my last conference this year... well, apparently I lied. 😂 When iJS Munich reaches out, you simply don't say no. Especially after looking at the speaker lineup. It's basically a conference full of geniuses... plus me. 😅 So I'll be speaking there at the end of October about WebAssembly and WebGPU in React, and I'm already ridiculously excited.
If you happen to have a spare bag of money lying around xDDD (or, much more realistically, your company still has some training budget left), come and say hi! I'd love to meet some of you in person. 😊
Anyway... let's get back to today's topic.
As many of you probably know, I have a soft spot for LinkedIn gurus and people who explain everything with absolute confidence. You know the type: their solution is always the best one, everyone else is wrong, and there are absolutely no trade-offs. 😄
Sometimes I get the feeling that at least some of that confidence comes directly from a single 15-minute YouTube tutorial.
But let's be fair for a second. Who among us hasn't watched a short video, finished it thinking "Yep, I totally understand this now!", and then discovered during the actual implementation that reality was... slightly more complicated? 😂
Since I spend most of my time working with JavaScript and AI agents these days, most examples will probably come from those areas. Feel free to add your own in the comments!
1. React / Angular / Vue (cross out the unnecessary one) is the best framework
This is probably the most common opinion after watching an internet guru, especially if you haven't formed your own yet.
Angular is the best because it has everything. React is the best because everybody uses it. Vue is the best because... well... Vue people will tell you why. 😄
Then you spend a few years building real projects and suddenly discover that all of these have strengths, weaknesses and different use cases. In the end, the "best framework" is usually just the one that solves your problem best.
2. LLMs are just autocomplete
Or, if you prefer another popular version:
"They're just stochastic parrots."
"They're not creative."
"They don't really understand anything."
Well... if it's all that simple, why do entire teams of researchers and engineers spend years working on them? Why are companies burning through billions of dollars worth of GPUs? 😄
Another statement that always makes me smile is that LLMs "aren't creative." Sure, they probably won't invent something completely detached from everything humanity has ever known.
But then again... neither do most humans.
Most people don't wake up one morning and invent quantum mechanics or write The Lord of the Rings. Creativity is usually about combining existing ideas in interesting ways, and LLMs are actually surprisingly good at that.
3. CQRS (or Redux on the frontend) is easy
Sure. Then you open the codebase and suddenly you're staring into the architectural equivalent of a horror movie.
I've honestly seen everything. Business logic split between Redux stores and components. Half the state managed globally, the other half locally. Actions that somehow contain business logic. Reducers that apparently decided to become services.
Years ago, when I was interviewing developers more often, I used to ask a very simple question: "Why do we actually need CQRS (or Redux)?" (By the way... not everyone even knew the difference between the two.) Then I'd ask another one: "Why can't we solve this in a simpler way?"
I swear, a surprising number of people answered something like:
"I don't know... that's just how people do it."
4. AI agents are just a while loop
To be fair! A good friend of mine, and my former tech lead, actually gives an excellent conference talk with exactly this title. It's intentionally provocative.
And let's face the truth... there is quite a bit of truth to it. Many AI agents really are "just a while loop."
The funny part starts about three weeks later. Suddenly your tiny little while loop has three MCP servers, an orchestration framework, retries, memory, tool calling, etc, etc...
Still one of the most fun things I've worked with recently, though.
5. WebAssembly is always faster
Whenever someone says this, I always ask the same two questions: Faster than what And faster at doing what?
Don't get me wrong, WebAssembly is amazing. There are plenty of scenarios where it absolutely destroys JavaScript performance, especially when you're dealing with computationally intensive algorithms, simulations or similar workloads.
But if your application spends most of its life waiting for HTTP requests to finish... WebAssembly probably won't make the internet faster.
And it probably won't suddenly turn your dashboard into NASA software either. 😄
6. Unit tests are our golden ticket
Especially the ones generated by the same LLM that just generated the production code. 😂 100% confidence!
Or... maybe not.
This can be particularly misleading on the frontend, where unit tests often verify exactly the code that was the easiest to write in the first place.
Congratulations, you've successfully achieved 100% test coverage, and 0% confidence!
7. Let's just add RAG
Yeees...
As if finding, cleaning, maintaining and selecting the right documents was somehow the easy part. 😄
8. Microservices / Microfrontends are the only good architecture
Absolutely! Especially if your application consists of six screens and one backend service. 😄 Or if you've got a perfectly healthy monolith that everyone on the team understands.
Sometimes a distributed architecture is exactly what you need. Sometimes it's just distributed complexity.
I could probably keep going for another twenty examples, but I think that's enough for today. 😂
What about you? Have you ever met one of those "one-YouTube-video gurus"?
If you enjoyed this article, consider following me also on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylwia-laskowska-5a8467131/
Top comments (92)
I can admit that I used to think that React, Angular, and Vue are popular based on how many people are talking about it lol.
I think the first two are common for beginners to think that, and I don't blame them. I just hope someone can look beyond that. Good list and glad you had fun on your trip :D
Thanks, Francis! That's exactly what I mean.
And I absolutely don't blame beginners. We've all been there at some point. Learning by watching videos is completely normal. What surprises me much more is when experienced developers keep repeating these oversimplified takes without questioning them. That's the part I find a little scary. 😅
The "Angular" went to back seat. Whereas the "React" became the #1. Vue became ternary frontend 😄
Hello Francis, Even i used to think the same before and agree with your comments.
Because a clever autocomplete or a stochastic parrot can be useful and "good enough" for a lot of use cases. I don't think the two are at odds. Otherwise, this is the "a million people can't be wrong" fallacy again. Over a billion people believe Jesus was the literal son of God, and over a billion people believe he was a human prophet - they can't both be correct and the truth isn't based on which belief is more popular (not trying to drag religion into things, it's just the biggest thing I could think of)
Hahaha, I have to admit, I really like the Jesus analogy. 😂
That said, I think there's one important difference. We can't really design an experiment that would tell us whether Jesus was the Messiah or "just" a prophet. (Although I've also heard other interpretations. One of my university professors used to joke that Jesus was simply the first psychologist. 😄)
With LLMs, though, we can actually run experiments. For example, one common way of thinking about intelligence is the ability to recognize and apply analogies. Researchers have tested LLMs on tasks like that, and the results suggest they're capable of considerably more than simply repeating patterns like a parrot.
So I don't necessarily disagree that "autocomplete" captures part of what's happening under the hood. I just think it becomes misleading when people use it to imply that LLMs are therefore incapable of more sophisticated reasoning or abstraction.
At last, you're back! For a moment, I thought you'd been lost somewhere at sea between Poland and Croatia... It's a real pleasure to read your writing again.
When you ask whether we've ever run into one of those self-proclaimed gurus, I'd say it's not a question of if, but when. They confidently spout complete nonsense with remarkable self-assurance and legendary audacity. It's honestly astonishing.
That's actually one of the reasons I never watch YouTube tutorials anymore (although I do use YouTube to listen to great music—there are even some amazing Polish musicians: here one of them). Same with LinkedIn: I mostly stop by to catch up with friends' posts (including yours), and only occasionally, while trying to avoid all the platform's noise.
Life taught me a long time ago not to trust polished speeches—whether they're Polish or not, but things that have actually been tested in the real world. Even so, I still get caught out from time to time... I actually touch on that in my next article 😉
Hahaha, you're absolutely right, Pascal! And yes, I love that Polish musician too.
These days I mostly use YouTube for music as well, or occasionally for an interesting podcast.
LinkedIn is another story... unfortunately, I check it much more often than I probably should, and I usually end up getting annoyed. The Polish LinkedIn scene is especially... unique. There always seems to be someone explaining how everyone else should run their LinkedIn profile, what they personally do, or what they would never do. 😅
The funny thing is, I know it annoys me... and yet I keep opening it anyway. I should probably cut back a little. 😂
And now you've made me curious—I can't wait to read your next article!
The “100% test coverage and 0% confidence” part just made me realize that with AI-generated code and tests, Sonar coverage gates that prevent you from merging until you reach a certain percentage are becoming almost pointless. AI can simply generate enough tests to satisfy the metric without giving you any real confidence. 😂🤣
P.S. How was your holiday in Croatia? And the most important question: how much did the beer cost? 😂😂
Exactly! That's the really sad part. Even more so because LLMs are actually incredibly helpful when writing integration tests as well, and those, when properly reviewed and supervised, can provide real value. So I'd much rather see AI helping us write better tests than simply inflating a coverage metric that doesn't tell us much anymore. 😄
As for Croatia, I stayed in Baška Voda, where it felt like every second person was Polish. 😂 Then we visited nearby Brela, and suddenly it was like we'd crossed the border into the Czech Republic. Czechs everywhere! 😂
Beer prices weren't bad at all: around €1.50 in supermarkets and €2–3 in restaurants. The only downside was that the two beers you see almost everywhere are Karlovačko and Ožujsko. They're... let's say what we call in Poland "sikacz" 😅 They don't even come close to Czech beer. 🍺
Exactly! I can’t stop thinking about it now. There are probably even more Sonar metrics that are becoming less trustworthy or can be easily gamed with AI. It feels like I’ve discovered a cheat code. 😅 Maybe I really should start reconsidering which metrics we rely on in our team.
I totally get what you mean about Croatia. We’ve just returned from Italy and it also felt like visiting some Czech holiday resort. 😅 Czechs were everywhere!
Those beer prices are actually not bad at all. In Italy, supermarket prices were similar, but a small beer in a restaurant was around €6 and it was a real “sikacz.” 😂 Karlovačko and Ožujsko suddenly don’t sound that bad!😅
Haha, that's actually a really good point! People are naturally lazy (myself included sometimes! 😂), so I'm pretty sure a lot of developers already generate at least part of their tests with LLMs. If those tests are only there to satisfy a coverage gate, the metric starts losing much of its value.
As for holidays, I think Italy has to be our next destination! 😄 We've explored so much of Croatia over the years that it feels like we've already visited every fortress, cave, and viewpoint there. 😂
And yes... Italians make fantastic food and wine, but beer isn't exactly their strongest suit. 😅 Restaurant wine can also get expensive, so I usually solve that problem the classy way: a €3 carton of wine from the supermarket. 😂
Italy is definitely worth visiting, especially for the food and coffee! 😄 Just be prepared for Czech tourists everywhere and disappointing beer. 😂
That’s classy! 😂😂
Haha, I'll be drinking Czech beer in October, and I hope FrontKon is prepared for that. 😂
Of course, after my presentation! 😄
Welcome back, Sylwia!
btw, I have something to confess. back in my early days, I judged a frontend framework's popularity by how hard it was for me to maintain it. 😅
So naturally, I thought Vue was more popular than React... because Vue was so much easier to work with 😂
Hahaha, that's a good one! 😂
Don't tell anyone... but I'm not really a Vue fan. xD
I agree it's probably easier to get started with, but for me the syntax somehow combines my least favorite parts of both Angular and React. 😅
That said... I know plenty of people absolutely love it, so I'll happily admit this is just personal preference. 😂
I've always knew you're not really a Vue fan but for some reasons, this still surprises me 😭
Hahaha! 😂 I think it's because I really love JavaScript itself.
That's probably why React feels the most natural to me. You're working very close to the language, and I enjoy that a lot.
Angular would actually be my second choice because I like its more structured, class-based approach and the clear separation of responsibilities.
With Vue... I always have this feeling that too much is happening inside a single component. 😅
But that's purely a developer experience preference, not a statement about the framework's quality, performance, or what other people should use. That's exactly why I try to stay out of framework holy wars. 😄
These debates are fun🤭, but real business constraints usually kill the oversimplification. Once cost, delivery speed, reliability, and maintenance matter, the “best” technology becomes highly context-dependent.
Exactly! 😄 It's always nice to read a thoughtful take like this.
In real projects, things become much more complicated. Then the business comes along and says, "We're building this in Angular because of our existing ecosystem/team/client requirements," and... that's the end of the discussion. 😅
Even if Angular wouldn't be your personal first choice, it's not exactly worth starting a holy war over. At the end of the day, delivering value to the business is usually far more important than proving that your favorite framework is objectively the best.
With the kind of gigantic mess our tech stacks and frameworks have become, is it even possible to say anything with a tiny bit of assertiveness these days, let alone exuberating confidence!
If the core internet protocols and specs were simpler and designed properly, we wouldn't be needing frameworks and npm monstrosities at all to build apps and sites today. At some point, I think forking the protocols and building everything from scratch would be a more sensible decision for everyone than carrying the legacy baggage forever.
Exactly! Sometimes I get the feeling that the louder someone shouts, the more they're perceived as an expert. I've lost count of how many times that kind of overconfidence has led to terrible technical decisions, or at the very least, burned through an incredible amount of time and money.
Ha great article. There's a lot of performative AI out there and yet, I have a soft spot too and am always on the look out for tips, tricks and the next new thing even though tips, tricks and the next new thing may not necessarily be useful for my build journey. lol
Oh yes, me too! 😂 I absolutely love new technologies and experimenting with them.
But at the same time, I've learned that sometimes the best tech stack is the boring one, the one that's well-tested, stable, and everyone on the team understands. 😄
Yes, true!
The funniest part is that one-video confidence often sounds cleaner than real experience. Real experience has caveats, scars, and weird exceptions. The danger is not beginners learning from YouTube; it is mistaking a good explanation for operational understanding before the thing has broken in your own hands.
Thanks a lot for this comment! I completely agree, and reading it made me realize that this idea didn't really come across in my article. I focused more on the technical examples and the jokes. 😄
But that's exactly it. Ironically, the most confident people are often those who've just watched one YouTube video, or those who've only ever worked with a single technology and confidently declare it's the best one without ever trying the alternatives. 😂
Real experience tends to make you more humble because you've already seen enough edge cases, failures, and trade-offs to know that almost nothing is universally true.
That is a strong addition to the article, honestly. The joke works because everyone recognizes the pattern, but the deeper lesson is humility as a signal of real exposure. Once you have seen enough edge cases, you stop making universal claims quite so loudly.
Hahaha, I have a feeling you've just given me an idea for another article. 😂
That would be a fun follow-up. The joke has legs because every developer has felt that dangerous phase between “I watched one explanation” and “I have seen enough edge cases to be careful.”
This is so real. I feel like 'just add RAG' is the new 'just use microservices,' everyone says it like it's a checkbox and not an entire discipline. Also welcome back, hope Croatia was worth the FrontKon lie 😂
Hahaha, exactly! 😂 I think we've all been there at some point.
And yes, Croatia was definitely worth it! 😄
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