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Comment by silentbicycle | Hacker News Reader

They can be useful (capable of doing useful things), but very poor at communicating their abilities (poorly designed interfaces). Part of the gut feeling that a design is beautiful comes from it communicating well, not sending a cluttered or confusing impression. What does the feeling that a design is ugly tell you?

A lot of programmers spend so much time dealing with problems in the "plumbing" (functional) level that they neglect interface, so in effect, using the program is like plugging together wires and hoses in a box full of moving gears and grease. Unix pipes are great for getting stuff done, but a lot of people don't want to deal with things at that level.

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I don't think it's programmers per se. Companies just don't think of design as part of the solution package. I've worked at many companies where you have new web projects and applications and we spend so much time architecting the solution and implementing it. When it comes to the design, - oh just slap on a nice stylesheet or have a visual/graphic designer polish it up.

Good design is more than just pretty graphics, but companies don't see it that way. And more often than not, programmers, who have no visual or usability training are put in a position where they must come up with a good interface and interaction design themselves.

For many companies that is the reality.

Yes, it's definitely not just programmers, but I'm expecting there are more programmers reading here than (say) architects or urban planners, who have their own design dilemmas.

> And more often than not, programmers, who have no visual or usability training...

It's not just that; the elements that affect usability during development, debugging, etc. are often completely unrelated to elements affecting usability for end users, so you get interfaces like this: http://www.ok-cancel.com/comic/4.html That's a great interface for ... figuring out if endian-ness is affecting a music player. Or something. Certainly not for using it to play music.

A thought I had today is that programming is a perpetual battle between "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and "computers are here to make our lives easier." Doing one impedes the other.

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