[sojacques]

- Programmers make horrible designers

Please don't generalize, this is not always true. Being a programmer (with a formal CS background) who used to make a living as a professional designer, I have met a lot of people like me. Good design is about solving problems, good programmers usually solve problems. When it comes to aesthetics, it's something that people do learn, and programmers can learn, too.

- giving the executive decision powers in the hands of most of the developers is a recipe for a disastrous product

I respectfully disagree here too, for the sole reason that developers can learn the ability of making decisions in a relatively rational way. I would even wager to say they might be more inclined to trust in data.

[utopkara]

I should have started with "Most programmers make horrible designers"; my apologies for that. The point is, even making a not-so-bad design, takes a lot of thought; more importantly, it takes courage to push a design concern that will make implementation harder and take longer to finish. I certainly believe that people are amazing, and they are capable of doing amazing things. But also there is the issue of possible vs probable. And, I don't take it lightly when I see a good programmer and designer in the same person.