There can be obviously good principles while design still remains hard. Chess, for example, has plenty of simple principles (like "control the center of the bo

There can be obviously good principles while design still remains hard. Chess, for example, has plenty of simple principles (like "control the center of the board") that are hard to execute. However, designers writing articles tend to be looking for insights that advance their knowledge. They don't write about things that are obvious to them, even though those are the most useful for the rest of us. And most non-designers are really looking for typography and color selection advice, which has a similar relationship to design as programming has to computer science.