[sanitycheck]

Things I get from designers: 1. Wireframes 2. Layouts (bitmaps) 3. Assets (fonts, images) (4. Occasionally, interactive prototypes made with designer-friendly tools.)

Designers already suck so badly at HTML & CSS that getting them to do any wastes more time than it saves. They don't need to be let near any other implementation tech either, not Android layouts, not iOS storyboards, and not React.

Designers don't really want to do implementation either, why make them learn a bunch of things they don't care about?

[jameal]

The author makes the point that "frontend designer" may not be the right title, so perhaps "UI developer" or one of the other titles he listed is more appropriate.

So I don't think he's talking about making designers learn implementation. The point is that the scope of frontend development has expanded so much that it makes sense to split responsibility between "front of the frontend" UI responsibilities and "back of the frontend" responsibilities like managing state, cache invalidation, routing, etc.

In any case the line between design and dev turns gray when you consider that designers can't practically mock up designs for the web for every viewport size, define what every micro interaction looks like, etc. There are so many nuances to creating a great UX that it makes sense to have a class of front end devs with those kinds of proficiencies.

[Cthulhu_]

> Designers don't really want to do implementation either, why make them learn a bunch of things they don't care about?

That's first off an assumption, although I do see where you're coming from. The main thing is speeding up and removing the middle man - why separate design and implementation if you can do them at the same time? The tools are there.