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>The interface looks very, um, VisualBasic or Microsoft Excel. That is fine. There is certainly a market for that. But it will turn off a huge segment of your m

by _dain_ 4y ago

>The interface looks very, um, VisualBasic or Microsoft Excel. That is fine. There is certainly a market for that. But it will turn off a huge segment of your market, namely those that aspire to be the lead in the TV show Mr. Robot. I know that this is meant kind of in jest, but do younger people really have much opinion one way or another about computer UIs? There's so much UI fragmentation on the modern Windows desktop, the aggregate effect is an aesthetic mess no matter what you do.

3pt14159 4y ago
Yes. I have been looked at with a certain amount of envy by youngsters with my "hacker looking" linux terminal at full screen typing like a madman on a train or in a cafe. Kids are influenced by movies and they want to be cool and powerful.
tzekid 4y ago
Yes and no. There's a large segment of students who are not 100% passionate about programming in itself and follow what looks and feels nice over what's practical. But that's their los IMO.
DrewADesign 4y ago
Yes, they do, and it has nothing to do with purposeless decoration or pretending to be a leet haxor as others implied. To even moderately experienced developers, a UI is a tool we use to interact with an application. To everyone else, the UI is the application. We developers need to develop an novice-level understanding of many things we touch but don't specialize in... Perhaps the domain we're developing software for, or networking, or database work. We also tend to get the classic novice overconfidence in those topics because we've never needed to know as much as the experts and therefore have never encountered problems we weren't qualified to solve... or so we think. UI design is one of those things. I'm an art school educated UI designer, have done significant work in serious graphic design, and worked for a decade as a full-time back-end web developer for a reputable organization. The number of developers that have tried to explain UI design to me, even knowing my background, is astonishing. I'm male, but it looks exactly like mansplaining by my estimation. UI design is a profession totally separate from software development and graphic design because making a good UI is a totally different process than either of those things– it's more akin to industrial design. Most developers don't understand its importance, and vastly overestimate their ability to create and evaluate interfaces themselves. I contribute code to open source projects all the time... but trying to contribute design work is a miserable experience. This is the reason independent open source alternatives will remain alternatives and never become standards. I take supporting evidence from IDE market shares. All of the top results are either commercial software or mostly controlled by companies that have staff UI designers. The one org that controls a top contender that didn't seem to employ a dedicated UI designer is Eclipse, which is famous for its usability... Just not in a good way.
- sublinear 4y ago
  > UI design is a profession totally separate from software development > ... trying to contribute design work is a miserable experience. This is the reason independent open source alternatives will remain alternatives and never become standards. These statements contradict each other and show how design is not separate from at least some aspects of software development (frontend application development). Most open source projects may leave the GUI as an afterthought or not even provide one. It makes all the sense in the world to separate the frontend from the backend especially if the goal is standardization. You might want to try your hand at frontend dev after working for so long on the backend. The discipline sorely needs people who understand both design and backend. You sound like you'd do very well.
  - DrewADesign 4y ago
    How are those statements contradictory? UI design is a separate discipline from software development just as automobile design is separate from automotive mechanical engineering. I am both a developer and designer. While it was never my sole full-time job, I've done a few thousand hours of front-end development in various environments both professionally and for FOSS projects. I'm quite familiar with how all of these pieces fit together and completely comfortable with my chosen professional path.

by _dain_ 4y ago

3pt14159 4y ago

Yes. I have been looked at with a certain amount of envy by youngsters with my "hacker looking" linux terminal at full screen typing like a madman on a train or in a cafe. Kids are influenced by movies and they want to be cool and powerful.

tzekid 4y ago

Yes and no. There's a large segment of students who are not 100% passionate about programming in itself and follow what looks and feels nice over what's practical. But that's their los IMO.

DrewADesign 4y ago

Yes, they do, and it has nothing to do with purposeless decoration or pretending to be a leet haxor as others implied. To even moderately experienced developers, a UI is a tool we use to interact with an application. To everyone else, the UI is the application. We developers need to develop an novice-level understanding of many things we touch but don't specialize in... Perhaps the domain we're developing software for, or networking, or database work. We also tend to get the classic novice overconfidence in those topics because we've never needed to know as much as the experts and therefore have never encountered problems we weren't qualified to solve... or so we think. UI design is one of those things. I'm an art school educated UI designer, have done significant work in serious graphic design, and worked for a decade as a full-time back-end web developer for a reputable organization. The number of developers that have tried to explain UI design to me, even knowing my background, is astonishing. I'm male, but it looks exactly like mansplaining by my estimation. UI design is a profession totally separate from software development and graphic design because making a good UI is a totally different process than either of those things– it's more akin to industrial design. Most developers don't understand its importance, and vastly overestimate their ability to create and evaluate interfaces themselves. I contribute code to open source projects all the time... but trying to contribute design work is a miserable experience. This is the reason independent open source alternatives will remain alternatives and never become standards. I take supporting evidence from IDE market shares. All of the top results are either commercial software or mostly controlled by companies that have staff UI designers. The one org that controls a top contender that didn't seem to employ a dedicated UI designer is Eclipse, which is famous for its usability... Just not in a good way.

sublinear 4y ago
> UI design is a profession totally separate from software development > ... trying to contribute design work is a miserable experience. This is the reason independent open source alternatives will remain alternatives and never become standards. These statements contradict each other and show how design is not separate from at least some aspects of software development (frontend application development). Most open source projects may leave the GUI as an afterthought or not even provide one. It makes all the sense in the world to separate the frontend from the backend especially if the goal is standardization. You might want to try your hand at frontend dev after working for so long on the backend. The discipline sorely needs people who understand both design and backend. You sound like you'd do very well.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  How are those statements contradictory? UI design is a separate discipline from software development just as automobile design is separate from automotive mechanical engineering. I am both a developer and designer. While it was never my sole full-time job, I've done a few thousand hours of front-end development in various environments both professionally and for FOSS projects. I'm quite familiar with how all of these pieces fit together and completely comfortable with my chosen professional path.