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Comment by ourcat | Hacker News Reader

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process.

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If you asked for templates you should have gotten templates, not mockups and not wireframes and not a demo. In my experience there is a common misunderstanding between designers, project managers and coders about what word or phrase is used to describe those very different things. And instead of learning what they are and being specific I have been told the equivalent of "just do your thing" ie, stop bothering me. Then people complain "this isn't what I asked for" and I have to explain the whole thing again while they don't bother to listen. Sound familiar?

template is an ambiguous term, clear communication and definitions of terms would help.

To clarify, you're basing your whole not understanding why people use Sketch based just on your experience that you mentioned?

I'm a programmer like you and used to believe in the idea that you should design in the medium which is HTML and CSS, and not in a tool like Photoshop or Sketch. But I've completely reversed my stance after working with a lot of designers who create beautiful sites that goes very well with the grain of the web.

The reason is direct manipulation. You're not thinking in terms of the DOM's static flow when trying to create a design. Instead you want a medium where you can quickly transfer the idea in your head to a tangible form and try out different layouts, typography, colors, and visuals.

But there still exist the problem of converting that design into code, and that is a wasteful exercise. You might have found Protoship UIPad, a tool I'm developing (in early alpha), useful there. It can convert Sketch designs into code - HTML/CSS and even React. Sketch has been incredible for that sort of stuff. It is a vector design tool and its design elements are fully expressible through CSS and SVG, unlike say Photoshop which is a raster tool.

Mostly hand-coding since ~'94. Also waded through the code-soup created by Dreamweaver for a bit. Thought it might save time having 'the designer' do the layout. It didn't. ;)

cynicism is well warranted. but if you're open to possibilities, they might pleasantly surprise you.

> This claim is typically met with skepticism. Isn’t generated code unusable? Are the elements going to be absolutely positioned? Would the CSS classes be named correctly, and how reusable would they be?

https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/code-generator-to-crea...

I think the problem here is that you asked for the wrong thing.

Of course you had to code everything by hand yourself - you didn't ask for code, you asked for design templates.

My IDE didn't teach me that much about software engineering either.

I'd be curious to hear what you consider to be an alternative workflow or tool.

Any tool can be used incorrectly in bad hands. The problem of choosing to work with talented and competent designers is largely unrelated from the choice of tool.

You should tell your Sketch designer about https://zeplin.io/ or upload your sketch design there. But I agree to some other comments... I think you and your designer do not speak the same language ;)

Invision does the same thing as this.

"thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process." - I don't see how Sketch is to blame for designers sending you the wrong files.

> [...] thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process.

This and the massive misunderstanding – where two parties agree to "templates", and one delivers mockups to the other who expects coded pages – tells me that Sketch is a subject in the story, but it isn't at fault.

Sketch users can be very knowledgeable designers and very good communicators. Sketch itself doesn't teach design, and it doesn't solve communication issues either.

just to clarify: I expected HTML (etc.) files. We'd already been through the whole wireframing process.

I also requested a responsive design.

What I got was as useful as a PDF.

Sorry, just kvetching on Sketching.

I just felt it was a waste of time that some basic coding skills could have solved. ;)

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