[jmclean]

As a designer who also writes code, this attitude really frustrates me. There are a lot of reasons that flat UI makes more sense for software, especially for responsive web.

Flat UI means less code and easier maintainability. It holds up better across a wide range of sizes. It makes it easier to have a style guide in code and create reusable modules. This allows the design team to focus on the bigger-picture user experience instead of perfecting button gradients.

High information density is great in many applications, especially interfaces supporting complex tasks for expert users. However, it takes a lot of work to design a great high-density interface. I feel like most of the high density interfaces I see are more of a case of the design or product teams not being able to make hard decisions about what's really important.

While some flat UIs certainly go too far in the other direction, I firmly believe that minimalism encourages good design by forcing a conversation about what information to prioritize. Especially for the mainstream consumer web, this is almost always better for everyone.

Finally, I don't appreciate this kind of attack on my profession. Good design is far closer to engineering than to taste. I don't think I'm hoodwinking people into hiring me.

[emotionalcode]

Aesthetics are just as much a matter of taste as they are engineering. A lot of code frankly lends itself to such verbosity/elegance/simplicity/density/readability/(...) because of cultural:personal [preference, pedantry, experience, understanding, knowledge base].

Rather, I'm not so quick to have an opinion on aesthetics, because I think philosophically, beauty defines a balance between simplicity and engineering. Every part expresses itself perfectly.

There are ideals that work across the majority, and there are ideals that are appreciated by a niche audience. There is the Ideal, which is never achievable, and there is the expression of the Ideal, which always exists. Engineering or design, I don't see a difference. Different content, same concept.

[jbeja]

Not to mention, FD UI is more performant than anything else.

[danellis]

Can you point me to some data on that?

[sehr]

Here's a pretty cool article from High Scalability on it: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/9/29/instagram-improved....

[danellis]

Looks like they did a lot of other things at the same time (like not creating app-wide singletons up-front). It would have been nice to see numbers just for rendering.

[blueskin_]

So you're telling me what I like?

Nice one, apple.