Last week I tried an AI tool that writes basic code from wireframe sketches...

I was working on a quick prototype for a client's landing page and decided to test one of those new AI coding generators. I drew a rough layout on a napkin, snapped a photo with my phone, and uploaded it. The tool spat out working HTML and CSS in about 15 seconds. It wasn't perfect, but it saved me 2 hours of typing. Has anyone else tried using vision-based AI for front-end builds yet?

2 comments

2 Comments

skylershah23d ago

Yeah that sounds about right. These tools are decent for rough drafts but fall apart fast if your wireframe has any complexity. The HTML they spit out is usually a mess of divs and inline styles that need serious cleanup. I'd never let that code hit production without rewriting half of it. For internal testing or brainstorming though, it's fine. Saves time on the boring parts, but you still need to know what you're doing to fix the output.

coleman.derek22d ago

Man I feel attacked because this is exactly how my coding attempts look. I once spent an afternoon trying to clean up a tool's output and ended up with a page that had five nested divs just to center a single button. The inline styles were like a yard sale of font sizes and margin values that made zero sense together. For a quick mockup to show the boss what I'm thinking, it gets the job done. But if that code ever saw the light of day on a real site, I'd probably get banned from the internet. You ever try to figure out why a tool decided to wrap your header in three extra container divs for no reason?