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Bad thing about being a designer is that most of the time you have to justify your existence by redesigning things that don't need a redesign.

philipov 9y ago
So... the bad thing about being a designer is that it's not a viable full-time profession?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  The same can be said for developers. 90% of jobs will soon be automated.
  - philipov 9y ago
    I don't know about 90% of all jobs, nor how soon, but as a developer, I see that as my purpose. I build things so I don't have to do the heavy lifting myself. I automate as much as possible and train others to do the maintenance so I can move on to building the next thing. If you're stuck in a rut trying to justify your existence with pointless busy-work, this suggests there isn't enough demand for your real work. Architects don't squat on a house they've built for someone, trying to constantly tear it down and redesign it. If no one needs you to design a new house, and redesigning the same house every year is the only work you can find, maybe there are too many architects out there.
nkozyra 9y ago
Surely that can't be the case at MS, they have so many other UX challenges across products that there can't be a need for designer busy work, right? This icon was jarring for me though I rarely use vscode. But I thought it noteworthy that it doesn't share the aesthetic of the application, which makes it tough to mentally map icon to app. I passed by it in my dock twice before making the connection. That's a design problem.
- StevePerkins 9y ago
  I have a hard time distinguishing parody from seriousness when it comes to UX. The previous icon was a purple "Jesus fish". The new icon is an orange Jesus fish, enclosed by a bottom and right border. Either of those things "mentally maps" to a programmer's text editor?
Kenji 9y ago
The worst thing about being a designer is that everyone can look at your work and think they have a clue even though they aren't experts. That's why I like low level programming. No project manager is going to look at your lockfree ringbuffer and tell you that it should be a few bytes larger.

philipov 9y ago

So... the bad thing about being a designer is that it's not a viable full-time profession?

miguelrochefort 9y ago
The same can be said for developers. 90% of jobs will soon be automated.
- philipov 9y ago
  I don't know about 90% of all jobs, nor how soon, but as a developer, I see that as my purpose. I build things so I don't have to do the heavy lifting myself. I automate as much as possible and train others to do the maintenance so I can move on to building the next thing. If you're stuck in a rut trying to justify your existence with pointless busy-work, this suggests there isn't enough demand for your real work. Architects don't squat on a house they've built for someone, trying to constantly tear it down and redesign it. If no one needs you to design a new house, and redesigning the same house every year is the only work you can find, maybe there are too many architects out there.

nkozyra 9y ago

Surely that can't be the case at MS, they have so many other UX challenges across products that there can't be a need for designer busy work, right? This icon was jarring for me though I rarely use vscode. But I thought it noteworthy that it doesn't share the aesthetic of the application, which makes it tough to mentally map icon to app. I passed by it in my dock twice before making the connection. That's a design problem.

StevePerkins 9y ago
I have a hard time distinguishing parody from seriousness when it comes to UX. The previous icon was a purple "Jesus fish". The new icon is an orange Jesus fish, enclosed by a bottom and right border. Either of those things "mentally maps" to a programmer's text editor?

Kenji 9y ago

The worst thing about being a designer is that everyone can look at your work and think they have a clue even though they aren't experts. That's why I like low level programming. No project manager is going to look at your lockfree ringbuffer and tell you that it should be a few bytes larger.