Re:Launch HN: Anima App (YC S18) – Sketch to Code Toolkit
by orarbel1 on Thursday July 19, 2018 @05:14PM
(#17570338)
We get this a lot and I do understand where you're coming from. Replacing human engineers will not happen any day now, but we project our vision years ahead.
For the time being, even if developers don't use the generated code, but rather just inspect it is better then guessing how a component should work by staring at a static image or a GIF.
If you take for example this elaborate interactive component: https://handoff.animaapp.com/#/timeline/XKHmOQP5Hcuipv/anima...
It was made completely by Michal, our co-founder/designer in Sketch with Anima. No code was manually written. Trying to convey this today usually involves hand-waving or for advanced teams, a GIF. By handing off functional code, a developer can interact and see the values that make this work. Even if not using the actual generated code.
Does that make sense? What do you think?
Writing HTML and CSS is not the hard part of front-end development. A modest developer can put this together quickly. The hard part is using javascript or someone other tech to piece it all together.
I would encourage you not to chase your internal goal. Instead, focus on making designers better instead of trying to turn designers into developers. W3C will release a new CSS/HTML spec, or some fancy new JS framework will come out and you'll be left scrambling to re-engineer.