Let’s ask the uncomfortable question out loud.
In 2026, we have:
Backend-as-a-Service platforms
Serverless everything
ORMs that write SQL you’ll...
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Yes, and just recently I heard that we don't need frontend developers anymore, as business logic belongs in the backend and everything else is done by machines now. I love your quote about pilots, as it's more accurate and up to date than the fact that inventing calculators didn't obsolete mathematicians. Your conclusion nails it as well:
Well said — that’s a sharp and thoughtful perspective. You’ve captured the reality perfectly, and that closing line especially shows real depth and experience in how modern systems actually work.
Hell yes. Skip the backend, and you’re just hiding the pain. Auth, consistency, scale, failures don’t vanish because you use serverless or BaaS. Want robust software? You still need people who understand what’s under the hood.
Hell yes — this hits hard and feels very real. Skipping the backend doesn’t remove complexity, it just postpones it until it shows up in worse ways. Auth, data consistency, scaling, and failure handling always surface eventually, no matter how shiny the tooling is.
This framing is spot on, especially the “you didn’t remove the backend, you removed the person who understands it” line. That’s the quiet mistake a lot of teams are making right now.
What I keep noticing is that tooling didn’t eliminate backend thinking — it just pushed it earlier and made it less visible. When you wire together BaaS, serverless, queues, and managed auth, you’re still making architectural decisions. You’re just making them implicitly instead of explicitly. Someone has to understand the consequences of those defaults.
I also like how you call out the illusion of safety around “the frontend can handle it.” That assumption always collapses under real usage. The moment money, trust, or scale enter the picture, backend concerns snap back into focus: consistency, invariants, abuse, failure modes. Those don’t go away just because the API came from a template.
On the AI point — fully agree. AI removes friction, not responsibility. It’s great at scaffolding and glue, but the hard part has never been writing endpoints. It’s deciding where logic belongs, what must be enforced server-side, and how systems behave when assumptions break. That’s judgment, not syntax.
The line that really lands for me is that backend is becoming invisible. I’d go one step further: the more invisible it gets, the more dangerous it is to treat it as optional. When complexity is hidden, misunderstanding becomes expensive instead of obvious.
So yeah — maybe we don’t need backend developers for demos.
But for systems that have to survive reality?
You still need people who understand what’s under the abstraction.
Good post. This is one of those “sounds obvious after you read it” truths, which usually means it needed to be said.
This is a really solid take — especially that idea that removing the backend often just means removing the person who understands it. I like how you frame modern tooling as hiding backend decisions rather than eliminating them; those choices still exist, they’re just easier to ignore until things break. From my experience, that “frontend can handle it” mindset always falls apart the moment real users, money, or scale show up. I also fully agree on AI: it speeds things up, but it doesn’t replace judgment about architecture, constraints, and failure modes. Great post overall — this is exactly the kind of insight that feels obvious after reading it, which is usually a sign it needed to be written.
Thanks for the article! Approaching the AI replacement problem through the lens of "disappearance" vs. "elimination" brings a much-needed perspective to the table.
We clearly share the same view on the Value of Understanding (or what some call Cognitive Transparency) the human judgment that catches logic errors AI tends to overlook. I’ve actually just published a piece looking at the economic and marketing reasons behind this question, including its historical roots:
When will AI replace Software Developers?
Kürşat ・ Feb 5
I'd really love to hear your feedback!
Really enjoyed this take — framing it as disappearance vs. elimination cuts through a lot of the usual AI panic and makes the discussion much more grounded. I especially agree with your emphasis on cognitive transparency; that human layer of judgment is still where many real-world failures get caught before they ship. Your angle on the economic and marketing forces behind the narrative is interesting, and I think it explains why this question keeps resurfacing every tech cycle. Personally, I expect the real shift to be less about replacement and more about redefining what “valuable developer work” looks like over time. I’ll definitely check out your article and would love to continue the discussion around where human insight creates the most leverage going forward.
AI is great at writing code, but backend engineering is about architecture and system design. That’s why humans (not AI) will always be the ones we trust with the core logic.
Exactly—AI can accelerate implementation, but backend engineering is about making high-stakes architectural decisions, trade-offs, and long-term system thinking, which require deep context and accountability. The core logic still demands human judgment, especially when reliability, security, and scale are on the line.
I think people are essential, but perhaps we don't need that many people anymore.
You’re right—people are still essential, but the focus is shifting from headcount to impact, where smaller teams with strong skills and leverage from tools can outperform much larger ones.