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I think I need to go lie down

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Re: I think I need to go lie down

#261

Post by karaterobot »

maaaaattttt wrote: post #229
JanneVee wrote: post #184

I feel old now. I'm fairly sure that we could do this almost as fast with VB or Delphi a couple of decades ago, but a little more deterministic results instead of having the tool inferring it from the label names. We had this and then we shoved everything in the browser and forgot that we could do this without using huge amount of compute of some generative AI model. Look at me I'm old yelling at clouds!

I have kind of the same opinion. Maybe more provocative. When people show me figma to HTML with AI I tell them “have you ever heard of Dreamweaver?” Ok, dreamweaver code was ugly and unusable when AI generated code is not too bad (sometimes). But still, I also feel we kinda were already close to where we’re at today.

I used Dreamweaver significantly back in the day, and use Figma professionally today. I see what you're saying, but there's no question about them being equivalent in functionality, except insofar as I do not consider generated code from either of them particularly useful. In that respect they are the same, but in every other way Figma is 100 times better.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#262

Post by lovasoa »

evntdrvn wrote: post #249
lovasoa wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking about that a lot recently. Where I work, we spend a very small fraction of our time on building things that are unique to our business. Maybe we are doing something very wrong, but I am under the impression that most of the code that gets written anywhere is extremely low-entropy. This low-entropy, repetitive coding is not limited to the user interfaces. We do tend to describe the same structures…

Hopefully this sounds like helpful feedback instead of annoying nitpicking: I found that the substantial "flash of unstyled content" when the page first loads to be very jarring/unappetizing. I think it would be worthwhile to investigate one of the approaches that can mitigate this FOUC effect. Cheers and good luck!!!

thanks for the feedback ! I cannot replicate that on my computer with any browser, and all seems normal to google pagespeed insights as well: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-sql-ophir-dev/4o7q6...

Which browser/device are you using, and from where ?

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#263

Post by theptip »

JanneVee wrote: post #184

I feel old now. I'm fairly sure that we could do this almost as fast with VB or Delphi a couple of decades ago, but a little more deterministic results instead of having the tool inferring it from the label names. We had this and then we shoved everything in the browser and forgot that we could do this without using huge amount of compute of some generative AI model. Look at me I'm old yelling at clouds!

Keep in mind this could equally be a picture of a napkin.

Ignoring that though, I t’s fair to make this point for the current level of capabilities, but look at the trajectory… in a year or two when the training set has lots of examples of people using this, it should be pretty competitive.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#264

Post by pclmulqdq »

gtirloni wrote: post #125
misja111 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, creating a basic form page -is- simple. What is so amazing, is that after ~25 years of web development, we have continued to make it more complicated than it should be, by continuously coming up with new web frameworks that are brilliant for all kind of fancy use cases but overcomplicated for the more common and basic tasks. Yes, there have been exceptions every now and then, but most web devs don't…

The software world is much more flexible than the real world (yeah , I know, you're taking to Sherlock here). Go to a civil engineer and ask to create a building that tilts extremely on one side and requires concrete reinforcement with titanium whatever... they will laugh at you. Do the equivalent to a software engineer or product manager and they will hurry to invent yet another framework to satisfy your request, wi…

I don't think this is about flexibility. It's more about culture. Software engineering culture does not value simplicity, and actually seems to value complexity. Other engineering cultures place a lot more value on simplicity, and its associated values of reliability and risk mitigation.

A civil engineer can build you that building, but they will think "what a ridiculous architect." With a software engineering mindset, they would happily build that building for you, and invent a new type of concrete mixed with titanium flakes to do it for you. And then they will go on a decades-long campaign about how titanium-flake-concrete is the Next Big Thing and that anyone using normal concrete is a simpleton.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#265

Post by NoGravitas »

MattRix wrote: post #207
JanneVee wrote: post #184

I feel old now. I'm fairly sure that we could do this almost as fast with VB or Delphi a couple of decades ago, but a little more deterministic results instead of having the tool inferring it from the label names. We had this and then we shoved everything in the browser and forgot that we could do this without using huge amount of compute of some generative AI model. Look at me I'm old yelling at clouds!

I get your point, but it only applies to the most simple of these examples. This can do all kinds of stuff, for example look further into that thread and you’ll see it implementing tic tac toe. The tool works by basically sending a screenshot of your diagram to GPT4 and saying “implement this”.

The tic-tac-toe example really makes it clear that oh — this works by plagiarism. Until you see that one, it's kind of easy to forget.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#266

Post by lakpan »

hliyan wrote: post #252
maaaaattttt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kind of the same opinion. Maybe more provocative. When people show me figma to HTML with AI I tell them “have you ever heard of Dreamweaver?” Ok, dreamweaver code was ugly and unusable when AI generated code is not too bad (sometimes). But still, I also feel we kinda were already close to where we’re at today.

Not sure about Dreamweaver, but the fact that no Frontpage equivalent exists this day and age, and armies of developers are grappling with HTML, React and GraphQL (e.g. Gatsby) to generate what are essentially websites, is very surprising.

Of course it exists, it’s just not produced by Microsoft and therefore relatively few people use it.

Webflow has been around for a while and I’m sure they implemented AI already (I didn’t even check). Other React-based tools surely also exist, but have an even smaller user base.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#267

Post by maaaaattttt »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #239
maaaaattttt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kind of the same opinion. Maybe more provocative. When people show me figma to HTML with AI I tell them “have you ever heard of Dreamweaver?” Ok, dreamweaver code was ugly and unusable when AI generated code is not too bad (sometimes). But still, I also feel we kinda were already close to where we’re at today.

Are you sure? I remember one of Dreamweaver competitive advantages was that it produced much cleaner HTML than it's competitors. FrontPage was the big offender with awful code.

To be honest I can’t remember when was the last time I used dreamweaver but it sure wasn’t towards the end of its life. So, it could very well be that it got better after my last experience. What I remember was way too many tags and almost unreadable classes or repeated styles. It was not possible to directly take over without quite some re-writing.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#269

Post by hirako2000 »

hliyan wrote: post #252
maaaaattttt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kind of the same opinion. Maybe more provocative. When people show me figma to HTML with AI I tell them “have you ever heard of Dreamweaver?” Ok, dreamweaver code was ugly and unusable when AI generated code is not too bad (sometimes). But still, I also feel we kinda were already close to where we’re at today.

Not sure about Dreamweaver, but the fact that no Frontpage equivalent exists this day and age, and armies of developers are grappling with HTML, React and GraphQL (e.g. Gatsby) to generate what are essentially websites, is very surprising.

There are countless of no-code tools to build landing pages, static site content.

For web apps the level of custom logic makes it unavoible to just code. Since web developers tend to be coders they would code static sites too. And use what they are most comfortable with, usually React.

Re: I think I need to go lie down

#270

Post by lakpan »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #257
nvm0n2 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? I remember one of Dreamweaver competitive advantages was that it produced much cleaner HTML than it's competitors. FrontPage was the big offender with awful code.

Toward the end of its life, Dreamweaver's code was quite readable. Webflow today is kind of an equivalent, and also puts out relatively readable HTML. I think most of the reputation comes from people looking at its early output.

I’d say nobody who “hand crafts” code finds any generated code readable. AI almost puts a dent in that, but even that often produces really ugly code.
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