5 ms·

How UI developers can adapt, not die

25 points by danielwbean 6y ago

29athrowaway 6y ago
UI/UX is not only about what "low code tools" offer. It's also accessibility, internationalization, usability, security... And low code tools are often not adecquate for integration purposes.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Is no-code displacing much traditional development that libraries did not?
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  Nope, but there sure is a lot of money being dumped into PR for certain platforms at the minute.
  - darkhorse13 6y ago
    I agree with your comment in the sense that the article does read like a PR piece, but it's not specifically marketing anything. That is extra baffling, because you would think that an article like this (poor substance) would be a run-of-the-mill marketing piece.
    - RobertKerans 6y ago
      Yes, the more I read the stranger I found it. It reads almost as if designed to instil a sense of panic in designers, as you may very well want in a marketing piece. But then add in some quite bizarre suggestions (Just learn Unreal engine!) and some buzzword phrases ("...roles often called "the backend of front-end" really, "often called"). Substance isn't there at all, and not even well written I dunno. Self promotion I guess? Targeted at LinkedIn, maybe, aimed at corporate?
scarygliders 6y ago
I am in doubt that "no-code" UI elements - or what I think of as "off-the-shelf UI elements" - will ever displace custom designed UI elements. If you're going to use off-the-shelf things - any off-the-shelf things - you are then constrained and limited in what you can do. No. Custom UIs and UI flows are here to stay.
RobertKerans 6y ago
> So wouldn't it be ideal if designers or enterprise users could grapple with the nuances of the UI directly and implement it themselves? Oh, this always works! Why must we attempt to be so efficient? This curse of specialisation must be lifted, it has held us back for too long! /s obviously, but in seriousness: > [author] is a software engineer who has conducted over 1,400 technical interviews for ...etc etc I find it almost beyond belief that someone with a [supposedly] large amount of experience in software development would to think that allowing clients to implement UI themselves is a good idea.
- diggan 6y ago
  > I find it almost beyond belief that someone with a [supposedly] large amount of experience in software development would to think that allowing clients to implement UI themselves is a good idea. It's not at all strange as there are many different types of UIs that have to be built. I think what the author is thinking about is the typical CRUD applications that many businesses need and that are only built in-house, where the UI matters less than in consumer software, and the UX is still important but as long as it's changable, could be done by the users themselves. I feel like the UI you're thinking about is the one for consumer software, where you're innovating on some solution for a particular problem, and the UI/UX of the tool is probably the most important thing, otherwise people won't pick up the tool in the first place. If you look at the output of many software agencies, most of what they are producing is simple CRUD applications (and some startups do this too, I guess) which probably could be built by the users themselves, if it's basic enough. While the output of the ones building B2C software is slightly more complex and requires more thoughts behind it to even work out.
  - lwhi 6y ago
    > .. where the UI matters less than in consumer software It's this statement that goes a long way to showing why we need UX professionals and UI designers. A good UI directly affects the bottom line of a company. A badly designed UI costs money. It's as simple as that.
    - 6y ago
romwell 6y ago
Looking at UI/UX of so many tools that I use, it feels like the UI developers died a long time ago.
- itronitron 6y ago
  Interesting that is also correlated with the standardization of UI/UX design software which allows designs to be pulled together without much thought. There is a lot of garbage UX that seems a result of trying to fit keyboard and touchscreen interactions into the same hole. The UI flow for saving a document in MS Word is a good example of this.
  - romwell 6y ago
    Oh God, how I wish the interfaces had a "This is not a goddamn touchscreen" option. I just want buttons that don't take half the screen, for starters. My mouse is good enough.
- Neputys 6y ago
  They did. If you're talking people of a certain caliber (Bret Victor etc.) I think they were dying for a wile now. There's just lots of guys all over the world in different companies doing essentially the same thing over and over again, no real innovation, no desire for it.
- leppr 6y ago
  I'm feeling like, outside the small circles of OSS lib developers and FAANG-level companies employing rockstar front-end devs, there is less and less appreciation for UI as an area to invest talent and money in. Perhaps this is due to boilerplate designs becoming good enough, at a fraction of the cost of custom solutions.
arcturus17 6y ago
The article's thesis can be summed up as "low-code and other UI development trends (eg, non-2D) are taking over, but there will be plenty of opportunities for UI developers if they adapt". However I find the premise that low-code is taking over highly questionable. It may be for some use cases, but they will likely remain just a small slice of the pie in the big picture. Judging by the amount of job offers alone, React is also taking over - to the chagrin of some, and the delight of others -, yet React is anything but low-code. We all know the limitations of low-code solutions too: they're good up until a certain point, they make you feel like an utter genius for the speed at which you are shipping, causing nods of approval and high fives all-around. That is, until you want to stray out of the trodden path: then you wish you hadn't adopted them in the first place, and that behemoth of a React or Angular app you shipped last year suddenly elicits the nostalgia of a long-lost lover with all its shortcomings and misgivings. So it is hard to believe that the next 10 years will see the decline of custom UI 2D development, or anything close to it. I'd wager if anything low-code will be another tool in the developer's toolbox, and shipping great products at speed will mean carefully architecting them to mix and match the best of both worlds. On the other hand, I predict that those going all-guns-blazing on no-code will encounter some unpleasant surprises at best, and in the worst cases will see spectacular project implosions. Such has been the history of radical cost-cutting and time-saving measures in software engineering in the last 30 years (outsourcing, low-code itself, etc.). And so it goes...
- lwhi 6y ago
  I completely agree. Conceptually, no and low code tools allow you tred along the _trodden_ path. Sooner or later you're going to want to go somewhere new, and when you do want to provide something custom where do you go? Dreamweaver tried to do this in the 90s and failed, personally I still think we're a long way off from a generalised solution.
- timvdalen 6y ago
  One thing that I see happening time and time again with solutions aimed at less-technical users, is that they inevitably end up being pushed to more technically inclined users as they are still seen as 'too technical'. As a result, these users work with very limited options while they could (much more easily) build something from scratch. A concrete example of this is Google Tag Manager, which was made so online marketeers could implement tracking without having to involve software engineers. In the end, the actual implementation of anything non-trivial is pushed to a software engineer, who has to spend time fighting the system to implement basic things without proper version control that could have been implemented on the actual site in a fraction of the time. As I write this, I realize that the thing that irks me the most about this is that it is a complete departure from the 'normal' agreed upon way to do proper software engineering, with all the tools that go along with that. Working in a 'low-code' system almost always means changing your entire process (which often goes against everything we've learned over the last decades of software development).
lwhi 6y ago
"Wouldn't it be great if we could just speak to designers, and get them to build everything .. no more awkward conversations with developers." "Wouldn't it be great if changes could be made instantly without being told we need to deprioritise our sprint goal and wait for a release on Monday." "Wouldn't it be great if we didn't need to pay ££££ for a contract developer to meet our deadline." "Wouldn't it be great if we could stop the tide from coming in this evening ..."
- Neputys 6y ago
  I object to the first line! At least where I am, designers get their fair share of same s__t. Including from developers ;)
  - lwhi 6y ago
    It's meant to be satire ..
    - Neputys 6y ago
      ...
Neputys 6y ago
TL;DR: Start working with Google/Apple products/standards if you want to "keep up"...
runawaybottle 6y ago
To echo some other points made in this thread, custom UI is pretty much the norm because the aesthetic part of it is seasonal. We recently built probably the nicest looking enterprise app within our company (even I was shocked when I first saw the designs, it was light years ahead of everything else at the company). Six months later it started to look dated. Design language that models certain user flows feel old over time, and obviously the aesthetic is completely operating under the laws of fashion, things stop looking fresh fast. This is all important because other products within the company can start to look and feel better, and definitely so can competing products by other companies. It happens so fast. Has anyone looked at MaterialUI lately? It looks dated. The new design paradigms are coming, and whether you like it or not, it’s going to make your current stuff look sluggish. So yeah, no-code tools could quickly build the design of the day, but today’s designs were already yesterday’s design yesterday. Lastly, from my experience Triplebyte does not really Leetcode their frontend people. Which means the sales pitch for people they certify for front end has to be centered around ‘UI developer’ (html/css/modest js) vs software engineer. They have an incentive to push some kind of narrative here.
lta 6y ago
The developers are supposed to disappear every ten years. By now there only should be a handful left in a cave. Everytime there's a lot code thing there is there. But they all sucked so far.

25 points by danielwbean 6y ago

UI/UX is not only about what "low code tools" offer. It's also accessibility, internationalization, usability, security... And low code tools are often not adecquate for integration purposes.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Is no-code displacing much traditional development that libraries did not?

RobertKerans 6y ago
Nope, but there sure is a lot of money being dumped into PR for certain platforms at the minute.
- darkhorse13 6y ago
  I agree with your comment in the sense that the article does read like a PR piece, but it's not specifically marketing anything. That is extra baffling, because you would think that an article like this (poor substance) would be a run-of-the-mill marketing piece.
  - RobertKerans 6y ago
    Yes, the more I read the stranger I found it. It reads almost as if designed to instil a sense of panic in designers, as you may very well want in a marketing piece. But then add in some quite bizarre suggestions (Just learn Unreal engine!) and some buzzword phrases ("...roles often called "the backend of front-end" really, "often called"). Substance isn't there at all, and not even well written I dunno. Self promotion I guess? Targeted at LinkedIn, maybe, aimed at corporate?

scarygliders 6y ago

I am in doubt that "no-code" UI elements - or what I think of as "off-the-shelf UI elements" - will ever displace custom designed UI elements. If you're going to use off-the-shelf things - any off-the-shelf things - you are then constrained and limited in what you can do. No. Custom UIs and UI flows are here to stay.

RobertKerans 6y ago

> So wouldn't it be ideal if designers or enterprise users could grapple with the nuances of the UI directly and implement it themselves? Oh, this always works! Why must we attempt to be so efficient? This curse of specialisation must be lifted, it has held us back for too long! /s obviously, but in seriousness: > [author] is a software engineer who has conducted over 1,400 technical interviews for ...etc etc I find it almost beyond belief that someone with a [supposedly] large amount of experience in software development would to think that allowing clients to implement UI themselves is a good idea.

diggan 6y ago
> I find it almost beyond belief that someone with a [supposedly] large amount of experience in software development would to think that allowing clients to implement UI themselves is a good idea. It's not at all strange as there are many different types of UIs that have to be built. I think what the author is thinking about is the typical CRUD applications that many businesses need and that are only built in-house, where the UI matters less than in consumer software, and the UX is still important but as long as it's changable, could be done by the users themselves. I feel like the UI you're thinking about is the one for consumer software, where you're innovating on some solution for a particular problem, and the UI/UX of the tool is probably the most important thing, otherwise people won't pick up the tool in the first place. If you look at the output of many software agencies, most of what they are producing is simple CRUD applications (and some startups do this too, I guess) which probably could be built by the users themselves, if it's basic enough. While the output of the ones building B2C software is slightly more complex and requires more thoughts behind it to even work out.
- lwhi 6y ago
  > .. where the UI matters less than in consumer software It's this statement that goes a long way to showing why we need UX professionals and UI designers. A good UI directly affects the bottom line of a company. A badly designed UI costs money. It's as simple as that.
  - 6y ago

romwell 6y ago

Looking at UI/UX of so many tools that I use, it feels like the UI developers died a long time ago.

itronitron 6y ago
Interesting that is also correlated with the standardization of UI/UX design software which allows designs to be pulled together without much thought. There is a lot of garbage UX that seems a result of trying to fit keyboard and touchscreen interactions into the same hole. The UI flow for saving a document in MS Word is a good example of this.
- romwell 6y ago
  Oh God, how I wish the interfaces had a "This is not a goddamn touchscreen" option. I just want buttons that don't take half the screen, for starters. My mouse is good enough.
Neputys 6y ago
They did. If you're talking people of a certain caliber (Bret Victor etc.) I think they were dying for a wile now. There's just lots of guys all over the world in different companies doing essentially the same thing over and over again, no real innovation, no desire for it.
leppr 6y ago
I'm feeling like, outside the small circles of OSS lib developers and FAANG-level companies employing rockstar front-end devs, there is less and less appreciation for UI as an area to invest talent and money in. Perhaps this is due to boilerplate designs becoming good enough, at a fraction of the cost of custom solutions.

arcturus17 6y ago

The article's thesis can be summed up as "low-code and other UI development trends (eg, non-2D) are taking over, but there will be plenty of opportunities for UI developers if they adapt". However I find the premise that low-code is taking over highly questionable. It may be for some use cases, but they will likely remain just a small slice of the pie in the big picture. Judging by the amount of job offers alone, React is also taking over - to the chagrin of some, and the delight of others -, yet React is anything but low-code. We all know the limitations of low-code solutions too: they're good up until a certain point, they make you feel like an utter genius for the speed at which you are shipping, causing nods of approval and high fives all-around. That is, until you want to stray out of the trodden path: then you wish you hadn't adopted them in the first place, and that behemoth of a React or Angular app you shipped last year suddenly elicits the nostalgia of a long-lost lover with all its shortcomings and misgivings. So it is hard to believe that the next 10 years will see the decline of custom UI 2D development, or anything close to it. I'd wager if anything low-code will be another tool in the developer's toolbox, and shipping great products at speed will mean carefully architecting them to mix and match the best of both worlds. On the other hand, I predict that those going all-guns-blazing on no-code will encounter some unpleasant surprises at best, and in the worst cases will see spectacular project implosions. Such has been the history of radical cost-cutting and time-saving measures in software engineering in the last 30 years (outsourcing, low-code itself, etc.). And so it goes...

lwhi 6y ago
I completely agree. Conceptually, no and low code tools allow you tred along the _trodden_ path. Sooner or later you're going to want to go somewhere new, and when you do want to provide something custom where do you go? Dreamweaver tried to do this in the 90s and failed, personally I still think we're a long way off from a generalised solution.
timvdalen 6y ago
One thing that I see happening time and time again with solutions aimed at less-technical users, is that they inevitably end up being pushed to more technically inclined users as they are still seen as 'too technical'. As a result, these users work with very limited options while they could (much more easily) build something from scratch. A concrete example of this is Google Tag Manager, which was made so online marketeers could implement tracking without having to involve software engineers. In the end, the actual implementation of anything non-trivial is pushed to a software engineer, who has to spend time fighting the system to implement basic things without proper version control that could have been implemented on the actual site in a fraction of the time. As I write this, I realize that the thing that irks me the most about this is that it is a complete departure from the 'normal' agreed upon way to do proper software engineering, with all the tools that go along with that. Working in a 'low-code' system almost always means changing your entire process (which often goes against everything we've learned over the last decades of software development).

lwhi 6y ago

"Wouldn't it be great if we could just speak to designers, and get them to build everything .. no more awkward conversations with developers." "Wouldn't it be great if changes could be made instantly without being told we need to deprioritise our sprint goal and wait for a release on Monday." "Wouldn't it be great if we didn't need to pay ££££ for a contract developer to meet our deadline." "Wouldn't it be great if we could stop the tide from coming in this evening ..."

Neputys 6y ago
I object to the first line! At least where I am, designers get their fair share of same s__t. Including from developers ;)
- lwhi 6y ago
  It's meant to be satire ..
  - Neputys 6y ago
    ...

Neputys 6y ago

TL;DR: Start working with Google/Apple products/standards if you want to "keep up"...

runawaybottle 6y ago

To echo some other points made in this thread, custom UI is pretty much the norm because the aesthetic part of it is seasonal. We recently built probably the nicest looking enterprise app within our company (even I was shocked when I first saw the designs, it was light years ahead of everything else at the company). Six months later it started to look dated. Design language that models certain user flows feel old over time, and obviously the aesthetic is completely operating under the laws of fashion, things stop looking fresh fast. This is all important because other products within the company can start to look and feel better, and definitely so can competing products by other companies. It happens so fast. Has anyone looked at MaterialUI lately? It looks dated. The new design paradigms are coming, and whether you like it or not, it’s going to make your current stuff look sluggish. So yeah, no-code tools could quickly build the design of the day, but today’s designs were already yesterday’s design yesterday. Lastly, from my experience Triplebyte does not really Leetcode their frontend people. Which means the sales pitch for people they certify for front end has to be centered around ‘UI developer’ (html/css/modest js) vs software engineer. They have an incentive to push some kind of narrative here.

lta 6y ago

The developers are supposed to disappear every ten years. By now there only should be a handful left in a cave. Everytime there's a lot code thing there is there. But they all sucked so far.