My GreatFrontend subscription is about to expire. Do I renew?
A year ago, the answer would’ve been an obvious yes. It’s genuinely an excellent frontend interview prep platform. But the industry has changed a lot, especially in programming and engineering.
Why it’s a great frontend interview product
Before I get to the verdict, let me talk about what I actually liked about this platform.
First, the questions are super practical. There’s a ton of UI scenario-based questions, and they were really useful for me when I was prepping for interviews.
Take this React Tabs question for example. Not only does it have VSCode keybindings, it also has Vim mode (this is my favorite part, i use vim, btw). Compared to similar platforms like LeetCode, GreatFrontend’s editor is actually built for programmers. That was pretty ahead of its time.
They also have a solid playbook for the kind of knowledge-based frontend questions that come up in interviews all the time.
And the biggest one. GreatFrontend has a full system design section. News Feed, Autocomplete, Pinterest layout, real-world stuff. Back then, this kind of content was genuinely hard to find.
Oh and this might sound dumb, but I never touched the algorithm section. Not once. I’ve always hated algorithm questions.
But honestly? Everything this platform trains you for is becoming less and less relevant. The world it prepares you for is slowly disappearing.
The market has changed
Starting late last year, Anthropic dropped Claude Opus 4.5. This model is different from any AI model before it. It actually works. It can one-shot generate genuinely solid code. It really cooked.
Introducing Claude Opus 4.5: the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use. Opus 4.5 is a step forward in what AI systems can do, and a preview of larger changes to how work gets done.
Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, said:
Pretty much 100% of our code is written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5. For me personally it has been 100% for two+ months now, I don't even make small edits by hand.
Fast forward to today. In the last thirty days, I landed 259 PRs -- 497 commits, 40k lines added, 38k lines removed. Every single line was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5. Claude consistently runs for minutes, hours, and days at a time (using Stop hooks). Software engineering is changing, and we are entering a new period in coding history. And we're still just getting started.
Here’s the thing about me. My hand-coding ability is pretty bad (at least before AI came along). But my engineering ability isn’t weak. I can work fluently with Claude Code, Codex CLI, or Cursor. Even before Opus 4.5, I was already solving the problems that come with AI coding using different engineering methods. Treating the context window as the most precious resource, using docs to guide the AI, adding code review into the workflow, etc.
Now Opus 4.5 has largely solved these problems, and the latest Opus 4.6 is even stronger. My identity has shifted from “frontend engineer” to “builder”. A much more versatile role.
Hand-writing code doesn’t matter anymore. At least, it’s no longer how you measure an engineer’s value.
If I were an interviewer in 2026
As someone who might hire engineers, I wouldn’t judge them by their ability to hand-write code.
So what does that mean for the skills GreatFrontend trains? That’s a question worth thinking about seriously.
What I’d want GFE to become, and who it’s for
I’d love to see GreatFrontend add AI coding content down the line. Not just vibe coding, but seriously using tools like Claude Code to tackle real engineering problems.
So who is this platform for right now?
If you’re actively job hunting and targeting FAANG or big tech, it’s definitely worth it. Especially the UI and system design questions.
If you’re interviewing at startups or smaller companies, it depends on the question bank. You can totally skip the algo section.
If you’re already a solo founder or indie maker? Probably not worth it. Your money is better spent on Claude Pro.
Honestly, I’m grateful for my year with GreatFrontend. It’s still my favorite frontend learning and interview prep platform, and the Discord community is a big part of that. Being around people who care about the same stuff just feels good.
Their Instagram also posts weekly frontend industry updates, worth a follow.
Leading front end interview prep platform. Trusted by 2M engineers worldwide. Start acing your interviews now.
So am I renewing or not
No. At least not this time around.
And honestly it took me way too long to make this decision. I kept going back and forth for like two weeks. Because the platform IS good. It’s not one of those things where you cancel and feel nothing. I actually felt kinda bad clicking that button lol.
But here’s where I landed. The hours I used to spend grinding frontend questions? I now spend them on completely different stuff. Building things with Claude Code, experimenting with weird workflows, figuring out how to ship faster as a one person team. That’s where my growth is actually happening. Not writing a debounce function from scratch for the 50th time.
And yeah I know some people are gonna disagree with me. “You still need the fundamentals bro.” Sure, I get that. But I already have the fundamentals? I’ve been doing frontend for years at this point. What I need now isn’t more practice on stuff I already know. What I need is to get better at the things that actually matter in 2026, like orchestrating AI tools, thinking at a system level, and shipping products that real people want to use.
One thing I do genuinely miss is the community though. The GFE Discord was one of the best dev communities I’ve been in. People posting their interview war stories, helping each other debug random edge cases, sharing memes about bombing system design rounds. That energy is really hard to find elsewhere. I’ll probably still hang around in there even without the sub haha.
Also want to be super clear here. This is NOT a “GreatFrontend is dead” post. If you came up to me and said you have a Google interview next month I would literally tell you to go subscribe right now. The system design section alone? Worth it. This is more like, my situation changed. The way I work changed. The kind of engineer I’m trying to become changed.
If Yangshun and the team ever ship AI coding content like I mentioned, I’d resub instantly. Like actually teaching people how to use Claude Code or Cursor to solve real engineering problems, not just “here’s how to prompt ChatGPT” level stuff. That would be so valuable. Way more than another algorithm question nobody actually encounters at work.
For now I’m putting that subscription money toward my Claude Pro plan. Which honestly I’ve been burning through like crazy anyway. My API usage last month was… yeah let’s not go there. Let’s just say my wallet is not having a good time right now.
Thanks for the ride GFE. It was a solid year.