The JavaScript code won’t write itself

I was driving through Austin, Texas, recently and I saw a Waymo vehicle. These are autonomous vehicles that—in principle, at least—drive themselves. The Waymo Driver boasts a variety of whirling gadgets that detect the surrounding environment and guide the vehicle. But when I pulled up alongside, I saw there was a human in the driver’s seat.

This ties right into my thinking about the role of the developer in the transitional world of AI-enabled programming. It underlines the question of how “in the loop” human coders need to be.

So far, it seems programmers are still needed to guide and inform our use of AI-assisted tools. We might even have reached a high-water mark of the current generation of LLM-driven AI saturation. For JavaScript programmers today, the message is: Keep learning the craft.

Top picks for JavaScript readers on InfoWorld

Intro to Nitro: The server engine built for modern JavaScriptAs a JavaScript developer, you want to know about Nitro because it’s built from the ground up for modern, full-stack web development. Find out why it’s the server engine for Nuxt.js, among others, and fast becoming the go-to server option for JavaScript and Node.

9 vital concepts of modern JavaScriptLet these fundamentals organize your mastery of JavaScript. From collections to closures, and from components to continuous integration, focusing on JavaScript’s key concepts will never let you down.

Advanced debug logging techniques: A technical guideLogging may not be the sexiest part of programming, but it’s a skill every programmer should master. This article features advanced logging tips good for any language, including JavaScript.

Is the generative AI bubble about to burst?AI is everywhere in programming, and JavaScript is no different. But where is this revolution headed?

JavaScript news bites

Chainguard offers malware-resistant JavaScript libraries

Zoneless Angular arrives in Angular 20.2

Web Codegen Scorer evaluates AI-generated web code

Wasm 3.0 adds 64-bit backing, language support

More good reads and JavaScript updates elsewhere

The 2025 State of JavaScript survey is liveThe annual State of JavaScript survey is among the most influential resources for learning what developers love and don’t-much-love about JavaScript and JS tools. Now’s your chance to weigh in.

How to thwart NPM supply-chain attacksGitHub’s top recommendation for addressing NPM supply-chain attacks is “trusted publishing”: a mechanism for verifying the validity of release workflows without using stored tokens. Read up on this critical change for library developers.

Chrome DevTools adds MCP server for the Debug consoleA gap in AI-assisted development has been the assistant’s ability to run and debug code in the browser. With the new MCP server in Chrome DevTools, agents can now connect to a live running application instance and interact with its output. This is a first step toward a feedback mechanism for AI tools.

JavaScript in the browser is 30 years oldTake a trip down memory lane and revisit the advent of Netscape Navigator, v1.0. Did all this really happen 30 years ago, or was it just the blink of an eye?

JavaScript tools updates: Astro 5.14, Node 24.9.0, and Nuxt 4.0 all had releases in the last month. Check them out!