Coding is not a necessary to "architect a visual language for an application's UI layer". This can be done in Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. The visual language is just that, visual. "Designing your very own twitter bootstrap"....that is what I mean when I say "architecting a visual language".
I think your points about workflow are well taken, and the answer certainly varies from team-to-team and platform-to-platform. It depends wholly on the teams' skillset and the requirements of the project at hand.
Finally, when using code as a "design tool", the aim doesn't always have to be production code. Personally, as a designer with my own front-end systems in place, delivering style specs for basic web elements (forms, type, buttons, tables, etc) would be accomplished faster using HTML/CSS than Sketch or Photoshop. I could take a screenshot and send this to the developer, which they could treat like any other mock-up. The benefit is, there is top-notch markup and CSS behind which they can use/not-use.
Your native example is a good one. IF I was designing an Android app, this approach would definitely not work.
Coding is not a necessary to "architect a visual language for an application's UI layer". This can be done in Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. The visual language is just that, visual. "Designing your very own twitter bootstrap"....that is what I mean when I say "architecting a visual language".
I think your points about workflow are well taken, and the answer certainly varies from team-to-team and platform-to-platform. It depends wholly on the teams' skillset and the requirements of the project at hand.
Finally, when using code as a "design tool", the aim doesn't always have to be production code. Personally, as a designer with my own front-end systems in place, delivering style specs for basic web elements (forms, type, buttons, tables, etc) would be accomplished faster using HTML/CSS than Sketch or Photoshop. I could take a screenshot and send this to the developer, which they could treat like any other mock-up. The benefit is, there is top-notch markup and CSS behind which they can use/not-use.
Your native example is a good one. IF I was designing an Android app, this approach would definitely not work.