Developer Trends in 2025

Awesome content!!!

After a couple of decades, many times I still go back to PHP... Just to make something simple, in almost programming languages, hell to start and configure, unless you use boilerplates, generators, etc. PHP just has it there, and you can be online asap without any added package.

You're speaking my mind. I've always coded in plain vanilla PHP. But everybody seems to swear by the necessity of frameworks, libraries, etc.

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I don’t know why I just laughed when you talked about php. That was funny my thoughts exactly

Finally, so nice to see that all the crazyness might stop 😂

Development is dead Stef... I am in this industry since 2000, it was never so bad as now and is geting worse... Everybody is using ai now and searching for automatization...

People are making a shift to actually doing things that work, it feels great, but in big companies the shift is still long time due

Healthy trend or unhealthy trends

Hey Stef, I am relatively new to freelancing, and im curious. Do u think Framer is a good platform to use for my clients websites ive heard mixed reviews about it and would love to hear your opinion

What's your opinion on small SaaS, do you think AI is overtaking this field? Is there actually room for small SaaS startups?

So many links in description yet no timestamps for the video.

Totally agree with you. Though I'm not a web developer, we still see library bloat in application development. Sometimes multiple versions of the same library because one version has bug x while another has bug y. We need both.

I don't understand how exactly "freelancing" looks like today. In the past I thought odesk/upwork is freelancing and pays way worse than a corporate job. What is freelancing today? Are you simply talking about those contractor jobs where you have zero benefits and are easily fired, but otherwise your daily work is similar to a 9-5 corporate job? Or are those one-off projects to code something? Are you always doing everything alone and by yourself in such contract jobs, or with a team? And where to find clients?

Thanks for sharing your thoughtful tipsand advices.

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Yes totally agree, simplicity is really great nowadays with the help of Ai sir I have a wordpress paying it with hosting act. and blgspot for free. Thank you so much for the encouragement.

Whats the thing between you and Ruby/Rails 😂?

If everything is going to be faster and of better quality, how can it be that having a server in the office still costs more?
As if it was supposed to become a basic thing that anyone who wants can put in his office and upload as many websites as he wants..

Don't get into programming unless you are planning to build a startup.

Do you guys reckon there's a market for building static websites for small businesses? Html and CSS only

I learned PHP back in 2006, and have been using it ever since. And I have been very resistant to using frameworks. PHP 8.4 is in the RC stage, with some great new features.

Despite years of working with modern tech, I feel like I've made no real progress. I used to build large websites with PHP (CakePHP) and jQuery, and many of those sites are still up and running smoothly after 17 years without any issues. However, ever since I started working with modern web technologies, I haven't been able to accomplish much. It's almost as if big tech has created these frameworks to stifle competition, constant breaking changes make it impossible to maintain anything, and the available tools become useless because you can't fix the problems yourself

Hello Uncle Steph, I kinda feel disillusioned with the industry. Your advice to devs that you should focus on the bigger picture and not just frameworks has made me a better dev. But I’m increasingly finding myself in a situation where a recruiter asks me “How many years experience do you have in FTX framework and bs like that. I have learnt high level programming languages like JS, then TS and Python, I learnt php because I saw the potential of freelance in this language. I picked up C and assembly because I was advised to pick up low level. And now I have no job and no prospects. How do we navigate this economy?

for solo development (or very small teams): vanilla is often a less ideal scenario to go.
Some Reasons are:
security (most devs are not an expert)
optimizations (most devs are likely not an expert there either)
best practises applied in the core of the app (again, most devs are not experts in these areas)
stability (often frameworks and libraries have tons of users and developers, so they become battle tested against bugs)..
etc etc etc etc

The trick is to find the right libs and frameworks to use. Avoid the "framework du jour" hype trains, use only well established libs/frameworks and stick with them (yes they are often boring).

PHP still relevantly but very verbose. Better to build servers on nodejs most companies don't use PHP. React best library to known, the most required ot of all libraries and frameworks on the market. Cloud engineering is the future. Make sure you learn AWS and get cert. As we debate there is a huge demand for it. For web devs, get your MERN stack, MYSQL and a cloud. You will find so much success. Learn what's in demand, not what influencers believe.

People don’t understand yet how freelancing is actually more secured and freeing than a 9-5 job. When they have kids they think it’s the only secured source of income because very often they have a mortgage at their back. What I learnt with freelance as Stef said, is that you can work less for more income in some situations, you can have multiplie clients because you work less for more money than your 9-5, and you feel more secured because you work for more multiple clients. You can save money to buy what you need without getting a loan or mortgage in the end and potentially reach financial freedom later on. This situation seem to me less stressing and also the work itself is going to be more rewarding than a 9-5 where very often you are not doing what you aspire to and you are being controlled.

I like the fact that you DIDN'T recommend R*by (as no one would in their right mind) 🤣

Soydevs say PHP sucks, yet you don't see people relentlessly trying to fix it like they do with JS.

as developers we dont need to depend on a company for work, build your own company. i dont use AWS. i have build my own server center using many computers. by knowing networking and programming everything is possible. you can build your own company selling products online..  build a social network for your country.. you have the power! ah and thats right you dont need to use llibraries or frameworks. you need to write your own code so that you have full control over your proyects..

Hi uncle steff I’ve been following your channel for years now I just wanted to ask once I put my website up what would be the next steps in getting experience to get a full time job in web development?

Would it be best to work freelance to build up my experience for a few years or ? What’s your take?

This is why Ruby on Rails from star to present time is focused on simplicity, happiness and consistency. Super fast and scales!

I used to recommend AWS to my customers but now I dread doing anything with it. So many hidden cost, so many drawbacks, and so much unnecessary complexity. Most companies don't need any of that, as you said. One start using Lambda or Vercel Functions and they end up with a $8,000 bill because of a DDoS, or because they suddenly received a bit too many requests. On demand cost means the more customers you have, the more money you pay them and the less money you make. I recently wanted to add a password protection on a Vercel deployment, this costs $150/month, or you have to open accounts for all your team members at $20/m/u. It's ridiculous.

I think Next.js could be as simple as PHP for building simple web pages... and I speak as a person who maybe wrote 2 lines of PHP in the entire career

Great takes

K.I.S.S. We've been saying that in the military for a really long time. Keep It Simple, Stupid . . .

U da man uncle steff

Yeah to simplicity!!

Hello, what will be regarding jobs? Its hard for juniors now. But it will get harder yes? Must have: 100+ years experience killing dragon, terraforming mars?

The problem with returning to implicitly is problematic when your manager doesn't seem to understand why you don't need to pay X $ for something you can do in a day
As for the configuration problems, at least for PHP, people use frameworks to deal with configuration stuff at the project level instead of php.ini file level or nginx level. The problem I see most of the time is in the JS world

What do you think about Blazor ?

Am I the only one who disagree with Uncle Steve in that point:

I see that React make the life easier, for me, building a website with react is more easier than vanilla html, css, and js, because the reusability of the components and the way how react is work.

What do u think ?

Vanilla code is definitely the way to go, but in 2024 going with PHP in the backend means you'll spend lots of time writing your own integrations with pretty much any third party API. Whereas if you use Node JS, all you need is to install their package and off you go. Plus you just need a single language for frontend and backend.

Thanks uncle stef great stuff

I have move from framework to framework but I love php currently building Laravel package and wp plugin although I don't have a job but I love php. Thanks a lot sir

Thank you uncle...very helpful 👍👍

Appreciate your talks Uncle Stef

Working on a huge accounting related project. What we use is PHP, mysql and Jquery. Not 999th version of Laravel, not the latest JS framework, not some fancy mongoDb storage. The most classical stack there is.

Return to simplicity? Return to sanity is more like it. 😊