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The real problem the designer and the engineering split. Designers should be fired. The best apps in history have been built by hackers with a great aesthetic

The real problem the designer and the engineering split. Designers should be fired. The best apps in history have been built by hackers with a great aesthetic sense. Somehow we have lost this today.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
For every “hacker with a great aesthetic taste” there are a dozen who have no taste whatsoever and at best mash together concepts with no regard for looks or usability.
- RF_Savage 4y ago
  "Coder Colors" is a thing for a reason.
spencerchubb 4y ago
I'm curious if you have examples in mind?
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  Winamp
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Looked cool and I enjoyed it, but was super fiddly to work with. It only looked great UX wise later because of the stark contrast with the thoroughly c*cked up UX of things such as Windows Media Player and iTunes on Windows.
throwaway1777 4y ago
That’s silly. Take Airbnb for example. It was literally started by art students. Sure there are amazing apps made by hackers, but there are also amazing apps that weren’t.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
brundolf 4y ago
I have an aesthetic sense but I'm glad I have a (sharp, agile) designer to work with. I don't think I could come up with an entire (interesting) look and feel, and I certainly couldn't make splash art/SVG graphics. I can come up with a boring-but-aesthetic look and feel, or I can take an existing look and feel and carry it over to new views that haven't been covered yet, but there's a lot more to it than that.
rarecoil 4y ago
You could s/Designers/Engineers/ and end up with the same statement. What you seem to be getting at is "hackers with a great aesthetic sense" - and what makes a hacker, then? An engineering background? A computer science degree? Most designers have some understanding of the platforms they're working with. Could they invert a binary tree on a whiteboard? Write an LRU cache? Scale a system to a million DAU? Usually not, but you don't need to do that to build a proof-of-concept application that people fall in love with. A designer may be a hacker, just as an engineer may be.

The real problem the designer and the engineering split. Designers should be fired. The best apps in history have been built by hackers with a great aesthetic sense. Somehow we have lost this today.

mynameisvlad 4y ago

For every “hacker with a great aesthetic taste” there are a dozen who have no taste whatsoever and at best mash together concepts with no regard for looks or usability.

RF_Savage 4y ago
"Coder Colors" is a thing for a reason.

spencerchubb 4y ago

I'm curious if you have examples in mind?

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Winamp
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Looked cool and I enjoyed it, but was super fiddly to work with. It only looked great UX wise later because of the stark contrast with the thoroughly c*cked up UX of things such as Windows Media Player and iTunes on Windows.

throwaway1777 4y ago

That’s silly. Take Airbnb for example. It was literally started by art students. Sure there are amazing apps made by hackers, but there are also amazing apps that weren’t.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

brundolf 4y ago

I have an aesthetic sense but I'm glad I have a (sharp, agile) designer to work with. I don't think I could come up with an entire (interesting) look and feel, and I certainly couldn't make splash art/SVG graphics. I can come up with a boring-but-aesthetic look and feel, or I can take an existing look and feel and carry it over to new views that haven't been covered yet, but there's a lot more to it than that.

rarecoil 4y ago

You could s/Designers/Engineers/ and end up with the same statement. What you seem to be getting at is "hackers with a great aesthetic sense" - and what makes a hacker, then? An engineering background? A computer science degree? Most designers have some understanding of the platforms they're working with. Could they invert a binary tree on a whiteboard? Write an LRU cache? Scale a system to a million DAU? Usually not, but you don't need to do that to build a proof-of-concept application that people fall in love with. A designer may be a hacker, just as an engineer may be.