[jason_plasmic]

One problem is that the code tool is usually a one-time code export. After the export, you'll probably want to change the code--add some business logic, event handers, etc. After a while, when the Figma design is changed, there's no way to update the presentational code only without redoing the changes.

Plasmic is working on solving this problem! The designs you make in Plasmic are architected for continuous iteration. Disclaimer: I work at Plasmic!

[izakfr]

The two-way sync does seem to be another problem with these export tools. Thanks for sharing, I'll take a look!

[PaulHoule]

Note there were expensive and proprietary CASE tools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engine...

in the 1990s which could often make the same edits a professional programmer would make when you edited a visual representation of the code because these were based on a Concrete Syntax Tree

https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/02/16/abstract-vs-concret...

where comments, whitespace, item ordering and all the choices of how to write something are represented. I don't think you could bolt this on to Figma because Figma doesn't have the right representation to keep track of it all.

Graphical editors run into so many little problems like the width of something gets computed to be 13.3333333333px maybe there ought to be a hierarchical "snap to grid" that makes sure is is 13px or 13.3px or 13.33px in the output source code, stuff like that.

Also what exactly is the target? MUI is mentioned in another friend and that's salient to me because I am looking right now at the accessibility of an MUI app: a tool for building applications and theming one single widget set seems like a feasible goal, particularly if it can all be codesigned.