When Everyone’s a Developer, How Do We Promote the Web Platform Over React?
November 10, 2025
2025 is a strange time to start a newsletter about web technology. The past four editions of WTN have focused on the intersection of the web and AI, because frankly that’s where most of the excitement is on today’s internet. But as a few people I link to this week point out, the web platform has improved to a point that it now does much of what frontend frameworks do. So why isn’t there as much exciting activity to report on regarding the web platform? The problem, I think, is that web platform improvements are being undermined by AI development trends. I see two main issues:
I’ve heard both Vercel and Netlify (two of the leading web developer platforms) say in recent weeks that their user bases are massively increasing. Why? Because of vibe coders. The definition of a “developer” has expanded to include people who rely on prompting rather than programming. But the problem is that vibe coders get React solutions instead of web-native ones. What’s happening is that vibe coders ask their magic lamps to build an app or agent, and the AI genie gives them a React app.
The leading large language models, like GPT-5, are defaulting to React and Next.jswhen asked to create web apps or sites. That entrenches the power that React has on the web development ecosystem, which means web platform improvements aren’t being utilised by AI. Which leads to point #2…
Source: When Everyone’s a Developer, How Do We Promote the Web Platform Over React?
This is a really good round-up of some recent articles, many of which, if not all of which, we referenced here in the last few weeks.
It also includes a reference to something I wrote recently in a similar vein.
This is a real-time of transformation across all of computing, and front-end isn’t alone in that. Where exactly it ends up? It’s impossible to say.
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Alex Russell
