[nickserv]

These are business decisions, not design choices.

> dumbing down the software

"The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

> change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs.

"We've decided to rebrand to focus on XYZ market."

> mobile devices because every one of them is slow

"If we can run the website on the user's device we'll save on developer time."

> Ugly software is a good sign because tells me no designer was there to ruin it.

It just means they don't have the money to hire a good designer. Meaning no marketing department. For whatever reason designers don't do open source. Looking at you GIMP. Blender finally bit the bullet.

[brudgers]

"The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

Non-experts is always a larger group than experts.

A design prioritizing non-experts does not benefit experts.

Moreover, experts know they are trying to solve hard problems and benefit from tools that recognize the nature of solving hard problems entails doing hard things.

Or to put it another way, though there is a large market of people who don't play the violin, a ukulele is not a violin.

[nickserv]

Exactly. There is pressure to sell to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. This leads to "simplifying" the UI.

Generally this means power users now have to click 3 times instead of 1.

Of course there are alternatives, like having an advanced mode or keyboard shortcuts. But that takes time and effort for a typically smaller set of users.