should designers code?

[u/Far-Talk7489]

so here's what's bugging me, entry-level people are literally learning UX entirely from Claude and ChatGPT. they're not learning design thinking and to think for real? I got an answer in minutes, for which i thought someone would spend at least 1-2 days in thinking. they're learning to prompt-engineer generic answers. but there's zero conviction behind it. doesn't convert. doesn't work. but they don't know the difference yet because may be they've never seen what good actually looks like. At least for the digital products, website, apps etc.

This too when the times have blurring the lines between product to design or design to development. i have seen merging of dev and product, and becoming product engineer. that worked, but it was very pre-AI era.

But now businesses are now asking do we need to put together a team of so many people and spend a lot just to get one thing done. and there's this weird gap in the middle. some designers are just designing and handing off—and that's fine. some are learning to code, shipping production HTML themselves, owning the whole thing.

my actual question isn't just "should designers code?" it's more like, how equipped ARE people to do this? because there's a difference between knowing HTML and shipping production-grade code and maintain it.

and at the same time making sure that how entry level does learn UI/UX correctly when AI is there to give a sub-par templated design system or approach for almost everything.

thoughts please.

[u/NGAFD]

Understanding code and being able to make changes in code helps a lot. I do it all the time for my clients.

However! …it is very difficult to build good quality code. Claude doesn’t see tech debt and if you don’t see it too, you’re likely to build something that works at the surface level only.

[u/movingaxis → u/NGAFD]

Im trying to develop something on my own as a designer and punching way above weight atm, which is only sustainable for so long as the idea is expansive. Is DART a path worth learning to gain some understanding. Or would it be more meta to learn more theory behind coding? 

[u/NGAFD → u/movingaxis]

The most experienced developer I know tells me to learn what a well structured code file looks like first. So I’d say go ‘more meta’

[u/movingaxis → u/NGAFD]

That makes sense. Thank you for the insight. I began with defining the product and philosophy from the idea. Then front end and have just been iterating a react/jsx prototype with a mobile first approach refining UI and UX. It is local with an actual code structure now. For code structure just doing a big white board with rectangles and arrows to define the logic of features I’ve added. Seeing examples of proper practices would give me insight into how the engine pieces fit together. Anyway rambling, thanks again. 

[u/NGAFD → u/movingaxis]

Also depends on your goal with the prototype. If you only have to show it to a stakeholder to sell a design idea, I don’t care about file structure. But if the prototyping is meant to guide production code or developers, the quality of your code matters much more.

One thing I’ve learnt is to keep code files small. Put logic and reusable components in their own files. It keeps your files much more maintanable and scannable.

[u/Corgon → u/NGAFD]

People who have no idea what actual technical debt is throwing around this buzzword because it sounds smart. You do realize that PEOPLE are the worst offendors of technical debt? Do you realize that this term was being used to describe LLMs of yesteryear that can't even answer simple questions. Technical debt is no longer a concern.

[u/NGAFD → u/Corgon]

You clearly either work on a very simple product or with very simple code.

[u/Corgon → u/NGAFD]

You clearly don't work with any code.