Programming against design, who is the best?

[ArtUA]

Hey Guys,

Recently I had a bet with my friend and colleague at the same time 🙂
He is a programmer and he was telling that application doesn’t necessary require the good design. It can go without.
What would you think?

 

[Sijmen]

Every program with human interaction has design. It might just be very bad design.

 

[shecky]

i think your friend is an ignorant fool and should not be a colleague of yours.

 

[MisterMe]

...
What would you think?

This issue was settled back in the 1980s. Your friend's comment is profoundly ignorant.

 

[Muncher]

You can use programs w/o good design, like many windows apps, but you wouldn't enjoy it or be tempted to ever use it again. Likewise, a program with great design that does little would be enjoyed until the end user wants to do anything outside the features of the app.

 

[ChicoWeb]

Good idea, we can all go back to DOS, Telnet, and Pine Mail. Fascinating idea. Maybe we can move MR back to a bulletin bored (bbs).

 

[yeroen]

If your friend is of the 'it was hard to program so it should be hard to use' persuasion, tell him to read Why Software Sucks

 

[bootedbear]

A good example of what happens with no design: Lotus Notes!

 

[ChrisA]

Hey Guys,

Recently I had a bet with my friend and colleague at the same time 🙂
He is a programmer and he was telling that application doesn’t necessary require the good design. It can go without.
What would you think?

Many programs don't need any kind of visual design at all. For example your car has a computer inside the controls the air/fuel ratio and monitors the engine. Not much need for graphic design.

I'm working on rocket telemetry software right now. No graphics there either. In fact only a smaler subset of all software runs on desktop computers and most of that has no graphic, even inside Apple's Mac's most of the code does stuff like move the heads on disk drives and convert PDF files to Epson printer language and what not.

Graphics is kind of like the tip of an iceberg, the 2% that end-users can see.

 

[pilotError]

If it doesn't have a gui it just has to be good enough! LOL

Make code pretty takes too long!

 

[Gelfin]

A good example of what happens with no design: Lotus Notes!

A-F'ING-MEN.

Recently I had a bet with my friend and colleague at the same time 🙂
He is a programmer and he was telling that application doesn’t necessary require the good design. It can go without.
What would you think?

Your colleague is a hack. When people like him get too much power in engineering departments it kills companies by slow poisoning. Pretty soon your product management team is having to come up with "lock-in" strategies just to compensate for the fact nobody but a masochist would ever want to use your product.

I bet he kicks back usability bugs with "works as specified" too. I just know the type.

 

[ArtUA]

Hey Guys!
Wow, there are a lot of comments. I'm surprised Thanks
Such kind of discussion is a normal thing between programming and designing departments in our studio (artua.com). I liked your posts and certainly I'll drop them to him🙂