5 ms·

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, dreamw

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.

nvm0n2 3y ago
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.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  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.
  - lakpan 3y ago
    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.
    - Zetobal 3y ago
      People also produce really ugly code.
      - raydev 3y ago
        That's why any good company has code review rules and required linters and push restrictions, etc.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      I once spent a week as an intern building a really clean and well done java swing UI options panel for a portion of our team's app. I was so proud of myself and thought it was so clear and concise and great. I told my manager it was all finished. Well, no one else on the team was that familiar with java swing so they couldn't work with it, so one of my coworkers had to spend an hour rebuilding the panel in the UI builder that the rest of the app worked in. It produced a perfectly functional UI that had all the features requested and could be maintained by anyone on the team. Sure, the raw java file was twice as long, but who cares? It gets compiled. I was enlightened on that day. "Elegant" is worthless in most cases. Five years later that entire app was rebuilt as a web app and nobody gave a shit whether one of it's option panels was artisanally hand crafted with care and love or spit out by an actually really good and regularized UI builder. We are data plumbers. Nobody cares if the pipes you laid out are arranged to look like the mona lisa, and it's probably worse for the customer and maintenance that way anyway.
- maaaaattttt 3y ago
  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.
hliyan 3y ago
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.
- lakpan 3y ago
  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.
- hirako2000 3y ago
  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.
  - andai 3y ago
    My friend works on a low code system marketed to small governments. (Basically just CRUD builder optimized for bureaucracy.) There's definitely a niche for it, it just hasn't caught on much for some reason.
- quest88 3y ago
  I'd like to talk about today's sponsor, Squarespace. (in Jest, I know it doesn't solve every problem!)
  - andai 3y ago
    I used to look down on it but when I heard it handles payment it blew my mind and I decided I'd rather use it myself if I ever make a shop instead of building it myself. To quote a random guy "I trust their code more than what I wrote at 2am."
karaterobot 3y ago
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.
- maaaaattttt 3y ago
  Completely agree. Was trying to find the current parallel of the design to code process. But there is no doubt dreamweaver is almost not comparable to Figma (at least the version I knew). As others mentioned the closest descendant of dreamweaver today is most likely Webflow.
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    I hadn't seen that comparison, but Webflow is really cool! I had to make a company website using it a few years ago, because it needed to be maintained by people with no coding skill at all. I found it really awesome. Also, their Youtube tutorials were about the most impressive tutorials I've ever seen, so well produced and fun that I would recommend just watching them as entertainment.
andai 3y ago
We're so close! Now we just need to reinvent Flash and life will be complete again.
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  Inb4 wasm with native extensions

nvm0n2 3y ago

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.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
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.
- lakpan 3y ago
  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.
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    People also produce really ugly code.
    - raydev 3y ago
      That's why any good company has code review rules and required linters and push restrictions, etc.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I once spent a week as an intern building a really clean and well done java swing UI options panel for a portion of our team's app. I was so proud of myself and thought it was so clear and concise and great. I told my manager it was all finished. Well, no one else on the team was that familiar with java swing so they couldn't work with it, so one of my coworkers had to spend an hour rebuilding the panel in the UI builder that the rest of the app worked in. It produced a perfectly functional UI that had all the features requested and could be maintained by anyone on the team. Sure, the raw java file was twice as long, but who cares? It gets compiled. I was enlightened on that day. "Elegant" is worthless in most cases. Five years later that entire app was rebuilt as a web app and nobody gave a shit whether one of it's option panels was artisanally hand crafted with care and love or spit out by an actually really good and regularized UI builder. We are data plumbers. Nobody cares if the pipes you laid out are arranged to look like the mona lisa, and it's probably worse for the customer and maintenance that way anyway.
maaaaattttt 3y ago
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.

hliyan 3y ago

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.

lakpan 3y ago
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.
hirako2000 3y ago
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.
- andai 3y ago
  My friend works on a low code system marketed to small governments. (Basically just CRUD builder optimized for bureaucracy.) There's definitely a niche for it, it just hasn't caught on much for some reason.
quest88 3y ago
I'd like to talk about today's sponsor, Squarespace. (in Jest, I know it doesn't solve every problem!)
- andai 3y ago
  I used to look down on it but when I heard it handles payment it blew my mind and I decided I'd rather use it myself if I ever make a shop instead of building it myself. To quote a random guy "I trust their code more than what I wrote at 2am."

karaterobot 3y ago

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.

maaaaattttt 3y ago
Completely agree. Was trying to find the current parallel of the design to code process. But there is no doubt dreamweaver is almost not comparable to Figma (at least the version I knew). As others mentioned the closest descendant of dreamweaver today is most likely Webflow.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  I hadn't seen that comparison, but Webflow is really cool! I had to make a company website using it a few years ago, because it needed to be maintained by people with no coding skill at all. I found it really awesome. Also, their Youtube tutorials were about the most impressive tutorials I've ever seen, so well produced and fun that I would recommend just watching them as entertainment.

andai 3y ago

We're so close! Now we just need to reinvent Flash and life will be complete again.

patmorgan23 3y ago
Inb4 wasm with native extensions