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Misleading title. Link Bait. What does the aesthetics of a web page have to do with the quality of the language? If the usability is in question, that's one
by davidu 14y ago
Misleading title. Link Bait.
What does the aesthetics of a web page have to do with the quality of the language?
If the usability is in question, that's one thing -- but the author isn't arguing the less "Sexy" (his words) sites are less usable, simply less attractive to him.
Who cares? If you pick a language based on the sexiness of various websites that are related to the language, you are probably not in the right role.
- iamgopal 14y agoI really don't give a damn about look, but that guy has a point.
- jurre 14y ago>>If the usability is in question, that's one thing -- but the author isn't arguing the less "Sexy" (his words) sites are less usable, simply less attractive to him. No, he does: It’s not just that Python sites are ugly (even though they are). It’s that the uglyness makes sites hard to navigate and hard to use.
- llimllib 14y agoHe makes that strong assertion with no evidence other than "I say so". I agree that the ruby sites demonstrate better visual design, but he needs way more evidence to convince me that they're more useful.
- cageface 14y agoGood design is a signal. If the people behind a product took the time to make something look good it's likely that they sweated the other details too. Especially when two products are close to functionally interchangeable, like Ruby and Python, design can be decisive. Engineers chronically underestimate the importance of design and marketing.
- Trufa 14y agoThis is true, I'm really more likely to put my credit card in a website that looks awesome than in one that doesn't. It immediately gives you some sense of trust. Disclaimer: you should't base your credit card use only on design!
- viraptor 14y agoRuby and Python are. But look at the origin of popularity. Python was popular in academia / system scripts for a long time. Ruby's popularity comes in a large part from Rails. Now guess which community has better graphical design skills? Or from the other end - all other things being equal (and of course they aren't in reality, there are many small differences), I'd rather use a language designed by someone who specialises in designing programming languages rather than one creating websites.
- cageface 14y agoI'd rather use a language designed by someone who specialises in designing programming languages rather than one creating websites. Are you referring to PHP or something? Certainly Matz is every bit the language designer Guido is. Like it or not, Python and Ruby are competing in a lot of very similar niches. Fluffing the design of your webpages is like stopping at the 24th mile of a marathon.
- stonemetal 14y agoFrom Matz's wiki entry: He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba, where he was a member of Ikuo Nakata's research lab on programming languages and compilers. Doesn't sound like someone who specializes in creating websites to me.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- viraptor 14y agoNo, I wasn't trying to point out anything about Ruby's creators. The preference bit was a PS I could actually skip... but it's there. I do however think that high popularity in one specific circle (rails developers) results in pretty pages about the language itself. The split was actually very clear not that long ago even in ruby itself. A couple of months ago docs for ruby core were on a really ugly and not very usable page with 3 small scrolling boxes on the top and documentation view below. It's gone now fortunately. (old version of rdoc generator theme - still visible on http://stdlib.rubyonrails.org/libdoc/rdoc/rdoc/index.html http://stdlib.rubyonrails.org/libdoc/rdoc/rdoc/index.html)
- cnlwsu 14y agoSome overestimate the importance of design, take a look at some ugly sites that are successful http://www.ebay.com/ http://www.ebay.com/ or http://www.craigslist.org http://www.craigslist.org
- cageface 14y agoYou can succeed without good design if you have no real competition. Both those sites also established themselves when design standards on the web were very primitive. Good luck finding the same success with that approach now.
- GlennS 14y agoConsider that signals mean different things to different people. These Python sites are targeted at Python programmers. What do Python programmers want? They want clean, neat and obvious. Above all they cannot abide unnecessary clutter. The Ruby screenshots listed have the following 'visual impact' features. They may make them more attractive, but don't help with usability and potentially get take up space that could be used for information: Elements introduced purely for decoration. Oversized logos Pictures of people Designer fonts By contrast, the Python pages are all information dense and organised with hierarchies of headers. This is a pretty rough analysis, but perhaps it explains the difference in approach?
- pwf 14y agoIt's definitely a signal, though I don't take to mean quite what you do... It's only 'likely that they sweated the other details' if you assume infinite manpower and resources. In reality, all of the very finite resources that went into picking the right shade of beige for the background could have instead gone into improving the actual tools. I don't think it's possible for an engineer to underestimate the importance of design and marketing for an engineering tool. Have you seen nginx.org?
- ionforce 14y agoYou don't care. But other people care. Duh.
- pfanner 14y ago>> Misleading title. Link Bait. true, that's why I didn't continue reading the article.