Why coding assistants are so bad at UI?

Question

A genuine question: I spent the whole day trying to get Codex to build a UI and finally gave up. Now I&rsquo;m considering doing it manually.

not_your_vase · Accepted Answer

On one hand they can't see. Haven't seen a "give me an svg unicorn" test since a while, but I guess their performance hasn't changed a lot. If you give broad prompts, then that will result usually in some garbage.As an anecdata, a few weeks ago I was creating some UI with libSDL for an embedded project with Claude, and I was quite impressed with the result. Granted, I specified everything I could think about: I instructed it page by page, iterating button by button and label by label.

blinkbat · Answer

what, exactly, were the failures?coding assistants are not visual-first, they are code-first. so it makes sense that they excel more at coding.

Why coding assistants are so bad at UI?

A genuine question: I spent the whole day trying to get Codex to build a UI and finally gave up. Now I’m considering doing it manually.

what, exactly, were the failures?
coding assistants are not visual-first, they are code-first. so it makes sense that they excel more at coding.