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I've come to dread looking in on these threads. It feels like walking into a swarm of wasps. Boy is the content/nastiness ratio low in this one. It makes me sad
by gruseom 14y ago
I've come to dread looking in on these threads. It feels like walking into a swarm of wasps. Boy is the content/nastiness ratio low in this one. It makes me sad and, as someone who has spent a lot of time here, ashamed.
To the people making and upvoting these putdowns: you don't come across as caring about design; you appear to care about feeling superior. That is not smart. It is a mean person's idea of what it is to be smart. As HN has acquired a reputation for being a smart place, it has become a mean place.
Do you guys know what "mean", in the sense of "nasty", means? It means common. Look up the root. The more you reinforce your wish to feel smart in this way, the more common you in fact become. It's hard to see this, because self-image is always telling us the opposite, and that feels good — really good. It's the opiate of the jerk.
In my experience, if one really wants to get smarter, one must work on inhibiting this. I was going to offer a tip or two, but who would want them?
Incidentally, these self-appointed protectors of Design against the masses appear to me to be significantly more mediocre in this way than some of the other subgroups here. Perhaps it's sample bias. Or perhaps it's because there's so little objectivity to any of it that one gets a purer strain of identity politics — "Leave Design to the Designers" and all that.
On another note, thanks to the OP for the helpful and playful article!
- pkuhad 14y agoAgree, the one which is simple is simply ignored because if its simplicity.
- pknerd 14y ago"I was going to offer a tip or two, but who would want them?" You can make a blog post and submit on HN?
- gruseom 14y agoThanks, but I already feel sheepish for preaching. Besides, HN is my strategy for never having a blog.
- rpm4321 14y agoI couldn't agree with you more. I'm a programmer with a fair amount of experience managing graphic designers, and I have a pretty good eye for design - if I do say so myself ;) After not having personally touched any frontend code for a number of years, I recently found myself in the position of having to personally bootstrap an important side project - backend, frontend, design, and mobile - all on a miniscule budget. The process she outlines so closely mirrored my own that I'm still not entirely convinced she didn't have a hidden camera in my office. This post would have easily saved me weeks of fumbling around, false starts, procrastinating, and looking around for the appropriate resources and frameworks. In my opinion my end product looks much more polished, but she was clearly just putting together a simple demo to support the text, and her design quality is easily sufficient to test out a minimum viable product. Of course, once you get some traction and have a budget to hire a designer, you should because design is sacrosanct blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. But if you're a programmer on your own with no budget, just trying to get your idea out into the world and not embarrass yourself, this could be invaluable.