As we enter 2024, it’s time to leave behind 2023. And I know I'm not the only one who is ready to move on, especially in the tech world. 2023 was an awful year for jobs, and even though we're not out of the woods yet, things are starting to look better.

Here are some of my predictions for 2024 in AI, the job market, and web development.

AI in 2024

The hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is undeniable, but towards the end of the year, we saw a rise in complaints about LLMs "getting dumber" and less useful. This is less about a drop in capabilities and more about people becoming more aware and experienced in the limitations of the current models.

In 2024, expect this hype to continue, especially as investors shovel money at companies that have anything to do with AI. Still, barring a significant technological advance, I don't expect the capabilities to increase dramatically from where they are now.

I often point people who are worried about this to autonomous cars. The first demo of self-driving tech happened in the mid-1990s, and here we are in 2024, and we still do not have fully autonomous vehicles. In difficult engineering challenges like this, it is normal for the final bits to take longer and be harder to solve than most functionality.

LLMs still do not think or reason, and negative prompts and other techniques easily trick them. Until they get a handle on hallucinations, security, and other issues, they will not be able to be trusted to do anything but the simplest tasks unsupervised.

You are more likely to be replaced by a human who effectively uses AI tools than by AI itself... ​ Unless your job is low-complexity and easily templated.

The Job Market

The tech job market shows signs of recovery after a challenging 2023 with layoffs and hiring freezes. Expectations are set for a healthier job market by the second and third quarters. However, the slack needs to get taken out of the market for things to ramp up again and if you're just getting started in the field, deepening your skills in traditional, high-demand languages like Java and C# is vital. Superficial abilities won’t be enough in this new job market reality.

We will continue to see expensive coding bootcamps making cuts and going out of business. The fast, expensive, superficial skills bootcamp model does not meet current employer demands, as evidenced by some camps choosing not to release employment data. Those camps releasing data show low placement rates in the 20% range.

The good news is that even at 20%, there are jobs out there for entry-level people. The bad news is it's highly competitive, which is even more reason to make sure your skills are better than the average boot camp graduates.

For those getting started in coding, platforms like skillfoundry.io offer comprehensive learning pathways supported by a community and professional mentors at a fraction of the cost of bootcamp programs.

Cloud Computing: Not the Default?

2023 witnessed some high-profile shifts from cloud solutions like serverless and microservices back to co-location and monolith architectures, primarily due to cost concerns. This is normal, and the pendulum from client to server and back has been active since I started programming 30+ years ago.

Companies are now exploring alternatives, such as colocation and self-hosting, driven by the need for cost-effective and efficient solutions. The trend suggests a balanced approach to cloud adoption rather than an 'all-in' strategy.

Be mindful that cloud providers make more money when you use more computing, so some guidance from conferences and influencers is designed to make you spend more money, not do what's necessarily best for your company's situation!

JavaScript in 2024

Expect the JavaScript community to continue to reinvent the wheel, discard things that were working instead of incrementally improving them, and make a lot of noise about how certain frameworks dying or aren't fast enough, cool enough, or whatever other mud they want to sling.

Whether you're in HTMx, React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, or whatever the framework of the day is, focus on the fundamentals of HTTP and how web applications and vanilla JavaScript work. If you take a drink every time something new is added to NPM, you'll end up like this guy: