Ask HN: What is the future for custom web developers

2 points by quadrant6 9 years ago | 0 comments

I'm curious to know peoples' thoughts on how the future bodes for firms providing custom web development as a service? in a time when things are increasingly being commoditized and automated.

The likes of squarespace, shopify, wordpress etc serve standard website needs pretty well these days. For more functional and complex sites or apps, custom development is still a necessity. But will that always be the case?

I've been thinking about this and it feels like there'll always be space for custom development but that scope will narrow over time. And that a completely custom-built website will become more of a rarity. Instead, it will be custom integrations and implementations - small pieces of development linking together UI, APIs and services.

It makes me believe that most of these firms will need to be able to offer a mixture of cloud integration and development to remain competitive.

No doubt there'll always be that space for hardcore 100% custom development. But I see that becoming niche.

What do you think?

brudgers 9 years ago |

I agree that the custom work will tend to move toward the back-end. I disagree that this is a narrowing of the available work. I think it expands because there are many more companies where operational improvements add more value than a digital brochure.