Artificial intelligence for web development: Perspectives from the industry

Abstract

As a field, web development is roughly 30 years old, and during this period, it has been transformed several times already as it has moved from static websites to dynamic web applications. Now, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the field is again at the cusp of a transformation as the latest AI tools might change how to develop for the web yet again. The objective of this study is to look into this phenomenon and understand how AI is changing web development. To achieve this task, we chose to use the sequential qualitative–quantitative design method that combines interviews with a survey to validate and expand our findings from the interviews. We found that AI is used by web developers to increase their development efficiency, as even the current tools are easy to use and access, although they come with several minor downsides, including AI not being able to understand complex logic, the need for validation of AI output, and suggested code that could potentially lead to security issues. While there are clear benefits to using AI tools for web development and AI proficiency is a vital skill for web developers, there are still open questions related to the quality of code produced by AI tools.