For a more thorough treatment of this topic, read Alan Cooper's classic book _The Inmates are Running the Asylum_ http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asyl

For a more thorough treatment of this topic, read Alan Cooper's classic book _The Inmates are Running the Asylum_ http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp/0672326140 http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp... Cooper first writes something we all like to hear: programmers actually control the fate of most high tech businesses. But then he makes a compelling argument that we're really horrible at what we do. The ideas in this book are difficult to swallow, but once I got past my own ego I learned a lot from it. Not every programmer is a design idiot, but most of us are. Good design requires study and training. Intuition alone only gets you halfway there (unless you're Steve Jobs, and he's not a developer).