First, I'd say this is changing massively. More and more of software is about good design and beautiful interfaces. Compare even a CLI app, something very much

First, I'd say this is changing massively. More and more of software is about good design and beautiful interfaces. Compare even a CLI app, something very much in the utilitarian vein, from the 2000's (git) and from the last few years (ripgrep). Git does not have any sort of usability concerns. The commands are named in confusing ways (git blame? git cherry-pick?), the default editor is vim which is its own usability nightmare, and the outputs are very plain with minimal color. Ripgrep uses color, has a pretty simple setup (type in the pattern to search it!), and really nice help docs. Same with fd vs find and other tools. And if you look at websites, well Hacker News is the last of a dying breed of websites. There aren't many sites that look like this anymore. Indeed a lot of the "modern web dev suckssss" crowd are not the people who actually build websites. Or if they do, it's only personal ones where they can have full control. If you asked any front-end developer to design you a Hacker News clone, at the very least they would limit the line length and increase the font size. It's just the vocal minority who insist that sites like Hacker News are the pinnacle of web design.