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Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

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Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#71

Post by GijsjanB »

DonHopkins wrote: post #43
GijsjanB wrote: post #22

I think this is great. I see a future where designers can draw and create an interactive prototype. Anything beyond that is, my (educated) guess, long way off. Anybody hoping this will remove the need for designers or front end devs will be disappointed.

I'm not disappointed because I don't think removing the benefits of thought and effort by people who have studied and understand user interface design, interaction, usability, accessibility, Fitts' Law, etc, is such a great idea or good for users. Drawing where to put the widgets (and not using constraints or grids or automatic layout or adaptive rules or responsive design, or user testing and performance measurement…

I imagine a WordPress-like site, where you draw widgets and bring it to life with a theme. Maybe nothing too rocket sciency, but I reckon there's a market for it.

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#73

Post by meredydd »

sien wrote: post #59
qwerty456127 wrote: post #58

For my whole life I've been "drawing" real GUIs and writing the logic code, not GUI code then. It started with VisualBasic 1.0 for DOS, then there were different versions of VisualBasic for Windows, then Borland C++ Builder and Delphi (I was using the former), then NetBeans Swing designer and WinForms designer in VisualStudio. And now building a GUI is such a problem that a huge number of almost-useless (I really pre…

It really is disappointing how modern web GUI environments are harder to use than what was around 20+ years ago. There are still Visual Basic Apps from the 1990s floating around in large corporations and in government. Users who were expert in the process but not expert developers could easily code up tools to their exact specifications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic#1990s Admittedly the deployment of we…

We've built an explicitly Visual Basic-like development environment for the web, which I think fits your bill: https://anvil.works.

It's got a drag'n'drop UI creator, you use Python to build the front-end and the back-end (with proper autocomplete, VB-style), and it even has a built-in database if you need one.

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#74

Post by sien »

andyidsinga wrote: post #63
sien wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is disappointing how modern web GUI environments are harder to use than what was around 20+ years ago. There are still Visual Basic Apps from the 1990s floating around in large corporations and in government. Users who were expert in the process but not expert developers could easily code up tools to their exact specifications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic#1990s Admittedly the deployment of we…

just curious - why would web assembly make it easier for those tools to reappear? I used to use hose 90s GUI tools - VB's, VC's, Symantec's and Borland's java gui tools. Although they did work well for fixed UIs (absolute positioning) -- they were rather hard to get non-fixed uis working. IMHO Bootstrap's grid system was a real leap in this regard and (to me) still a pleasure to work with.

Perhaps because I live in hope...

The main reason WASM and whatnot might make it easier is that instead of depending on thousands of Javascript libraries the way that so many modern web apps do perhaps a more controlled environment might include a better set of standard libraries and controls.

Also Javascript has evolved at a lightning pace which is remarkable but also makes any complex tooling for it tricky. 10 years ago jquery was the main thing, today React,Vue,Angular and so many other things are front end tools of choice.

But all that may be totally wishful thinking.

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#75

Post by jplayer01 »

sien wrote: post #59
qwerty456127 wrote: post #58

For my whole life I've been "drawing" real GUIs and writing the logic code, not GUI code then. It started with VisualBasic 1.0 for DOS, then there were different versions of VisualBasic for Windows, then Borland C++ Builder and Delphi (I was using the former), then NetBeans Swing designer and WinForms designer in VisualStudio. And now building a GUI is such a problem that a huge number of almost-useless (I really pre…

It really is disappointing how modern web GUI environments are harder to use than what was around 20+ years ago. There are still Visual Basic Apps from the 1990s floating around in large corporations and in government. Users who were expert in the process but not expert developers could easily code up tools to their exact specifications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic#1990s Admittedly the deployment of we…

Is Qt that much harder than it was back then?

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#76

Post by zeroname »

swsieber wrote: post #69
zeroname wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get excited. The thing that this demo shows in minutes could've been typed up in text in seconds . It is not a productive way to do things. There's a reason that these systems never catched on, they are unnecessary. You may say, but "non-programmers" will use it! No, they won't. Designers will use real design tools to create (non-functional) visual designs. Programmers will bring those visual designs to functio…

Airplanes were once worthy of investigation but practical. As were automobiles. Generally, the fact that something works isn't a compelling argument that something else won't succeed. I do aggree that it's pretty high bar in this case though - it's changing the flow, not just improving it. So it'd have to get very polished to be able to compete, which I just don't think it will. Still, maybe someday.

> I do aggree that it's pretty high bar in this case though - it's changing the flow, not just improving it.

My whole point is that this is not an improvement, it's actually a worse way to enter a simple datastructure into the computer. It's even worse than using the already established UI paradigm of programs like Paint. Picking a tool and dragging out a box is faster, because you don't have to learn the visual language of how to draw these widgets.

It does look cool, because it makes the computer appear smart, but it's just not a good interface for actual use.

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#78

Post by andyidsinga »

sien wrote: post #74
andyidsinga wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just curious - why would web assembly make it easier for those tools to reappear? I used to use hose 90s GUI tools - VB's, VC's, Symantec's and Borland's java gui tools. Although they did work well for fixed UIs (absolute positioning) -- they were rather hard to get non-fixed uis working. IMHO Bootstrap's grid system was a real leap in this regard and (to me) still a pleasure to work with.

Perhaps because I live in hope... The main reason WASM and whatnot might make it easier is that instead of depending on thousands of Javascript libraries the way that so many modern web apps do perhaps a more controlled environment might include a better set of standard libraries and controls. Also Javascript has evolved at a lightning pace which is remarkable but also makes any complex tooling for it tricky. 10 year…

I hear you on the tooling complexity side...

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#79

Post by la6470 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #55
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #2

What are people's thoughts on when this will actually be usable? UI eng is just another labor intensive automatable step for creatives. Next will be to automate the design part too. Don't draw your UI, generate it from user stories.

Pff! Yeah. And generating users stories is the PERFECT application of artificial intelligence. /s You could automate the entire software design and development process! Could't be any worse that what we have now, amiright?

Yes if you consider that once upon a time only specialists could write word documents , the software development process is in its infancy. Remember when one had to know macros to write a wordstar doc.

Re: Show HN: Don't code your UI, draw it

#80

Post by PavlovsCat »

Animats wrote: post #65
sien wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is disappointing how modern web GUI environments are harder to use than what was around 20+ years ago. There are still Visual Basic Apps from the 1990s floating around in large corporations and in government. Users who were expert in the process but not expert developers could easily code up tools to their exact specifications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic#1990s Admittedly the deployment of we…

It really is disappointing how modern web GUI environments are harder to use than what was around 20+ years ago. Yes. We had drag and drop UIs decades ago. Now you can't even get a decent GUI program for laying out a web page. CSS/Javascript got so messy that even Dreamweaver became useless. Part of the problem is that ad code requires a messy environment, so that ad blockers and click generators have a hard time. Go…

It's a real shame. If you start with a blank file, HTML/CSS/Javascript are so much nicer now, if you don't need anything cutting edge browsers are generally great, too. I think our technology is not so much the bottleneck as how it's used.
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