[arstin]

I like the analogy, but I'm not sure how you intended it since I think it can reasonably make different points. It can surely help if an architect knows about material and construction (see, for example, the work of Christopher Alexander's group who relied on knowledge of materials and construction to wildly reduce costs while increasing quality). But it's also plainly true that any architect is going to be dependent on skilled contractors. Might be fun to read or write an article exploring all the nuances of the analogy.

Speaking as a UX designer by title and inclination who has to spend most of his time as a full stack dev by economic necessity, I've come to the view that in an ideal world most designers ought not have to code. It works well for me, since I'd personally get bored only implementing or only designing. But every week I feel the tension between very different demands on my limited energy, ability, and time. I feel how I almost subconsciously compromise my design work to get it to something I can implement in a realistic time, how the fact I've invested effort into the implementation very subtly pressures me to not make serious design changes, how my figuring out a cool coding trick or library encourages me to add it to my design when it's actually a superfluous distraction (see the vast majority of products by UI engineers who care about design).

To be honest, I'm hard pressed to say how being able to build essentially whatever I want has helped my design work, especially now that there are pretty good, quick to use prototyping tools like Atomic. Maybe it has in such a deep way that I don't even notice it, but I'm skeptical! :)

That said, I do personally agree with the author that, all else equal, some coding knowledge is a good thing if only to help in communicating with and empathizing with developers.

[clavalle]

Having hired a UX designer that had never coded, it was a very frustrating experience.

I enjoyed the high-touch with customers approach that they brought to the table but when it actually came to implementation it was as if I brought an astrologer to an astronomy meeting -- a lot of the same words were said but neither knew what the other was talking about.

There was just no sense of proportion on the UX side.

I am not saying a UX designer needs to code in the course of doing their UX work, but I do think they need to know how and have had some experience in it. Otherwise, the distance between saying something and doing it is too great.

[arstin]

Yeah I can understand that. I've worked with plenty of designers who can't code, and to my taste the only part that can be a little frustrating is when they don't accept that some great ideas really can't be built. But that said, I do think that negative is usually outweighed by the value of keeping the ideal in front of the reality...it's just they need to be sure to also help with what needs delivered in two weeks!

As sort of a joke, I've been on the flip side of that---especially with more enterprise-y Microsoft stack style dev teams---where I propose a design and am told it's impossible and I respond with a detailed explanation of how to build it within their constraints. I think they like that even less! :)