[_xnmw]

The example mockup image shown is really unimpressive. As usual, the difficulty is in implementing the last 20% of edge cases and design subtleties, not well-defined black-and-white block layouts like the given example. It would've been simpler to build a classical program to handle that example, and the result would be much better and more predictably structured.

It's like programming a self-driving car for a 2D game. Trivial. Now try taking that to tar roads. I don't know why this toy example is even news, it's nowhere close to the difficulty of real-world design mockups.

The AirBnB sketch2code example is a lot more impressive, but that's basically just handwriting recognition with a 1 to 1 mapping of symbols to code pieces.

[candu]

Do we really have to crap all over this person's work? It's clearly intended as a learning exercise / tutorial written by someone who's in the process of learning themselves, and not as "breaking news" or a production-ready system.

IMHO we should be encouraging this sort of engaged learning.

[Rexxar]

If he just try to learn something it is unappropriate to start the article with this sentence : "Within three years, deep learning will change front-end development. It will increase prototyping speed and lower the barrier for building software."

[NathanCH]

In three years software like this would absolutely change front-end development. Already is front-end development constantly progressing every year.

PSD to HTML services were outsourced a decade ago for a reason.

[weego]

Hopefully an AI won't insist on halting the sprint to change build tooling for the 3rd time in as many years at least.

[headcanon]

A usable service taking advantage of this is still a long way off, but we don't get there unless people do the legwork.

One thing that could be usable more quickly would involve simplifying the problem space a bit. For example, the airbnb example using symbols could translate to, say, react components. If the grid system is well designed and you have a mature library of components, one could easily come up with interfaces that would generate react code, and ideally work well enough to serve as a starting point for the engineer to take over and turn it into a working app.

A system like this also need not be used in production-ready apps - I can envision a scenario where PM and designer can quickly sketch out and test ideas with working interfaces, without direct engineer involvement. That in and of itself would change front-end development significantly as the article claims.

[haggy]

Found the front end developer :D

But all jokes aside, I have to agree with others replying to your comment that this looks to be a learning exercise. It shouldn't be berated or beaten with a club. Without this kind of curiosity, the tech industry wouldn't be where it's at today.

[joe_the_user]

From the article:

"Within three years, deep learning will change front-end development. It will increase prototyping speed and lower the barrier for building software."

-- This is an article that somewhat breathlessly claims that AI will be the thing plugging the "last mile" problem in the coding of the front end.

I think myself and other other folks chiming in here would be less skeptical if this "last mile" problem hadn't existed since the 90s. And moreover, it seems like a conventional solution to this should work.

The problem is that last-mile, best front-code varies not based on the input image but on a multitude of contexts outside of the image itself - the server software, how the code will be used, etc.

I'd say this is indeed a problem for AI but it would require a distinct paradigm than the present train/test/output paradigm, more like a expert system that could modify it's behavior with natural language output.

[haggy]

From what you posted: "It will increase prototyping speed and lower the barrier for building software"

How does that claim that AI will be plugging the last mile problem? That extremely vague statement says only that it will increase prototyping speed and lower the barrier of entry.. neither of which hints at solving the last mile problem.

[jeffmcmahan]

Yes, this is typical AI weenie optimism. "We can handle many of the easiest cases, so in X years we will be able to do all the really hard things that we haven't even thought of yet!" No.

[beached_whale]

You could have made you point in a far better way that encourages and doesn’t berate. Eg often people are optimistic but are unaware of the hard edge cases, the edge cases are interesting

[maffyoo]

i dunno, we could equally say that your position is UI optimism. AI is new tech, certainly as it now becomes feasible to apply it to real problems. Given some of the challenges AI is solving right now this one is relatively trivial, HTML and CSS have specifications and there are well held paradigms and principals of User Interface design. The domain is very constrained so lends itself to AI very well. To say this is an exercise undertaken by the author and the very visible progress he has made is very impressive. If you read the entire article the work he does on recreating designs is even more so. Surely one of the goals of 'intelligence' artificial or otherwise, is to actually deal with "hard things that we haven't thought of yet" AI is solving (and unearthing) those problems right now. Imagine somewhere like squarespace where all you do is upload a design and website is produced as a result is that beyond the realms of possibility given this really impressive experiment produced by the author, definitely not. Id hate to think we had to contrive edge cases or fabricate complexity just so we can prove that AI cant sole every problem...