The Frontend Skills That Are Actually Dying (Not the Ones You Think)

Everyone is pointing fingers at jQuery and PHP. The real list is different, more uncomfortable, and way more relevant to your career right now. Open any developer forum today, and someone is declaring something dead. jQuery is dead. PHP is dead. CSS is dead. Most of these takes are wrong, recycled, or both. This article is not that. Two developers. Same years of experience. One keeps getting interviews. The other keeps getting ghosted. The difference is not talent. It is which skills they are still holding onto. First, the skills everyone says are dying — but are not jQuery runs on over 75% of all websites. W3Techs has tracked this for years, and the number barely moves. WordPress powers 43% of the entire web. It runs on PHP. These are not dying. Stop worrying about them. The real list is different. And it hits closer to home. #5 — Writing CSS purely from scratch This was a real skill. Understanding the cascade, specificity, and layout modes. Developers spent years getting good at this