| This article is not nearly as bad as it makes itself look at first. Speaking of appearances. Saying you're giving lousy advice isn't an excuse for giving lousy advice. > "I want to make my sites look attractive." Sure, but you should worry about making them usable and solving a design problem first: how do I best convey the usefulness of this product to its potential users? > "Design seemed to consist of complicated rules that weren’t written down anywhere, plus an unlearnable sense of taste, possessed only by a black-clad elite." Design is about solving problems elegantly, I'm tired of fellow programmers rehashing the idea that (interaction) design is like modern art, it couldn't be further from it. But "seemed" makes it sound like that was just the past, how about today? > "I decided to do my best to hack what it took to make my own projects look vaguely attractive." Let's make thing "vaguely attractive", that's the ticket. > "And too often now, I see excellent programming projects that don’t reach the audience they deserve, simply because their design doesn’t match their execution." Couldn't agree more, except their design is their execution. If you mean to expose your work to the public and fellow professionals, it's your job to make it compelling. > "I really think that Bootstrap is one of the most significant technical achievements of the last few years: it democratizes the whole process of web design." Because web design was such a dictatorship until now. Yes, I'm nitpicking, but if you make no effort to learn HTML & CSS, I highly doubt you will by using bootstrap. Why would you? It looks "half decent" enough as it is. I hope I'm wrong. The rest of the article, as others notes, is not nearly as wrongheaded as its introduction makes it sound. Still, I wish developers would stop trying to "hack" design and actually have the guts to learn it, as designers do with programming. |
I've refactored a whole lot of designer code in my day. Let me assure you that this is a two way street.