I think the negative responses are coming from the fact that you say the developer SHOULD be the designer. As people have pointed out below, this is a rare comb

I think the negative responses are coming from the fact that you say the developer SHOULD be the designer. As people have pointed out below, this is a rare combination, and hard to achieve at business scale. But, I gotta say that I agree in general that this is a good direction to move in. You see it in aerospace, industrial design, automotive design, architecture -- fields where aesthetics are intertwined with the technological constraints of the medium. When pg talks about what a developer working on their own can achieve, it's logical to extend that to what a developer who is also a designer can achieve on their own...