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Comment by jamesjyu | Hacker News Reader

This is really great.

Many years ago, I was neck deep in frontend coding. I got so good that when given a mockup, I could code the skeleton of the page "blind" without viewing it in the browser. I would load the page at the end and grade myself on how accurate I was. I've always wanted to do a contest with other frontend coders to see who could get closest to a complex layout—like the NYTimes—in one go.

One day, this type of skill will become a curiosity—a relic of the past similar to horseback riding. I would be happy to see the automation of pure translation of boxes into code.

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Sorry if this is OT, but these types of contests exist! I went to one of these[1] maybe two years ago in Stockholm and I had a blast. I think the format was 32 people competing, 8 on stage at a time being shown a design which they had 15 minutes to mimic without previewing, then the crowd voted for winners using their smartphones. Two winners from each group of 8 went on to the finals. The competitors screens were mirrored on screens facing the crowd, so everyone could see how people tackled the problem in real-time. One guy did an ASCII representation of the design, which the crowd enjoyed enough to send him to the finals.

A large audience, smoke machine and lots of lasers, hard techno, and free beer. They did an amazing job setting the mood. They even have their own IDE[2] that everyone competing is required to use (with combo-counter and cool rave-y visual effects).

[1] http://codeinthedark.com/

[2] https://github.com/codeinthedark/editor

That is incredible! I knew there would be the off chance that someone would have put something like this on, but this looks like they went all in.

I'm an old guy & Kraftwerk is all I need for a good mood programming. Or some Plaid.

Oh my god why didn't anyone tell me about this? This looks freakin amazing!

I still like horseback riding. It's pretty fun!

Definitely not deriding horseback riding (no pun intended). Humans will always do things for pleasure that they used to do purely for practical reasons. Just look at the mere act of jogging.

But, one thing I know that I'll never do for fun is debugging IE6 browser compatibility issues. I'll never get that part of my brain back again.

Many people still enjoy horses without using them as primary transport. I reckon it will be the same with ICE cars - various people with the money and inclination will still enjoy classic cars even when their daily driver is electric.

I can't find it, but there is a contest where people are challenged to re-create a mockup in front of a live audience, without seeing a browser until they are finished. I'd also like to do that :)

edit: someone else found it!

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