[ofalkaed]

I go out of my way to avoid icons everywhere possible and mostly have lived icon free since sometime around the turn of the century. I despise icons, but these old Mac icons do tug some strings, I don't hate them and may even like them, I absolutely have some serious nostalgia for the days when they were a part of my life.

[riffraff]

I used to unthinkingly put icons everywhere.

Then, once, a designer friend was doing some UI and I suggested using icons instead of edit/view text or something like that, and he replied "I don't believe in the thaumaturgic power of icons" and that somehow changed my perspective forever.

[zombot]

Nothing to do with you, but I wish I could just say "I don't believe in the thaumaturgic power of AI" to achieve a similar effect.

[masfuerte]

Say it five times into a mirror and Sam Altman will appear to deliver your pink slip.

[lopis]

I think icons are nice, but using icons instead of labels, is a terrible design decision in principle. It might be acceptable for your power users, or if you know your project is only used by you and your household or something like that. My company just did this for mobile to save space. It's so confusing even though I use our product every day. Humans can read short labels faster than they can decipher icons.

[nekooooo]

this is one of the most engineer comments i have ever read on hackernews. icons are symbols. you avoid all symbols?

[benj111]

Letters are also symbols so no.