
Why Tony Stark is better than you - julio
http://julio-ody.tumblr.com/post/552745613/why-tony-stark-is-better-than-you
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aharrison
Answer: Namely, because he is a fictitious character.

The article writers contention that programmers should also have solid HCI
knowledge is not necessarily unreasonable, but the comparison to "2 meetings a
week, and in a year..." is just ridiculous. Perhaps it was intended to be over
the top, but division of labor exists for a good reason. What we really need
are amazing back-end and interface engineers who _can work with eachother
effectively_. That, and, as we are seeing with the iPhone becoming mainstream,
a cultural willingness to put in extra work on the UI because _it matters_.

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chime
I sorta fancy myself as a do-it-all. I do the design, write the backend, sell
it to the client, do the testing, receive the feedback etc. I think it comes
from the fact that I've been doing all of this for almost two decades now. I
have spent three times more time fiddling in Paint Shop Pro than professional
graphic artists in Photoshop. I may not be able to make designs as pretty as
280North but that doesn't stop me from giving it my best.

I've also spent more time and energy configuring Apache and various *nix apps
than most sysadmins. But I don't feel comfortable blogging about "Top 5 Unix
commands you must know" because I always feel there are 100 others who know
more than me so I'll let them blog on these topics. I'll blog about what I'm
good at or my own experiences. Which brings me back to the do-it-all topic -
if it needs to be done, I want to learn how to do it and do it well. I
delegate and outsource when I have resources available but if not, I just do
whatever needs to be done. Heinlein's quote seems pretty appropriate here:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a
wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization
is for insects."

~~~
mey
That is an excellent quote, although it's given me a few more things to strive
for in my life. (butcher a hog, set a bone, write a sonnet, die gallantly)

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tumult
_Stop believing Photoshop, Pixelmator, Illustrator, or anything else is too
hard. These tools can have a steep learning curve (not as bad as you’d think),
but so did programming when you were starting on this game._

Knowing how the tools and palettes work in Photoshop makes you a good designer
like knowing Java's syntax makes you a good programmer.

~~~
frisco
Ask someone who doesn't know how to program to read just a few lines of code.
Though it's very naturally readable to you -- and in general, if you didn't
know a new language you could try reading it line-by-line like English -- it
looks totally impenetrable to them. I've heard people tell me that they have
no idea how I do anything [programming] when they look at just a simple script
in PHP or Ruby.

Knowing the Photoshop interface is clearly not what makes you a good designer,
but in general it is a necessary-but-not-sufficient prerequisite to being
really good.

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thomaspaine
I wish I was better at design. On the other hand there's this wonderful
principle called division of labor, and while I might spend 10 hours designing
a mediocre website, a good designer will design a great one in half the time.
This has actually happened to me. After spending a weekend building out some
pages that I thought looked pretty good, my designer friend sent me a
photoshop mockup that made me decide to totally scrap what I had made, and go
with her design instead.

The most productive I've ever been has been while working in tandem with a
good designer, because it frees me up to do what I do best, and that's write
code.

Now, I will say that it's important for any web developer to understand
principles of design, because understanding what your users actually want is
crucial for both backend and frontend work, thinking about user interaction,
your data model, etc.

~~~
mistermann
Exactly....if one followed the OP's advice, I suppose maybe eventually I could
get skilled in design and layout, but as far as I can tell, that is an entire
profession in itself, I have enough trouble trying to stay current just on the
pure programming stuff. The hours I've spent trying to get something to lay
out properly across browsers using CSS could surely have been spent better
elsewhere.

~~~
yesimahuman
I don't personally know many people who understand all of the intricacies of
CSS and browser support and writing HTML along with it that _aren't_
programmers.

To me, the design and the implementation are two very different things, and
advanced CSS seems to be more in the programming realm (despite its goals to
be accessible to the average designer).

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donaq
Ironically, your 3-column blog design is not very friendly, IMO. I had to
scroll up and down to read that post.

~~~
harisenbon
When I got to the scroll up part of the post, I stopped reading...

Looks very nice at a glance, but fails its usability tests. ;)

~~~
megablast
Clearly one of those people who have every window maximised to take up the
whole screen. Like people who wear white sneakers, do not trust them.

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joegaudet
I think this article is a perfect example of a what I've perceived as a
growing trend of "developers" working at the "top of the stack" with no idea
what is really going on under the hood.

That infact there are many, many, many developers who work on projects that
are enormous that never see "end users" in the, guy who owns an iMac, sense of
the word.

The implication that anyone who writes great software, but lacks "design"
skills (in the graphical sense of the word) is so crazy... I wonder if this
guy has ever thought about the guy who wrote the embedded realtime system in
his car that runs his anti-lock breaks, no WOW factor there.

EDIT: never have I ever wished I had enough karma to vote something down
before.

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mattmaroon
Yeah but Superman's better than Tony Stark and he can't design anything, so
this argument is entirely invalidated.

~~~
bonsaitree
Dude. You're NOT seriously going to TRY start a DC vs. Marvel comic character
thrown-down on HN?!

I pity 'da fool.

~~~
donaq
Well, there's no chance that Iron Man could defeat Superman in a head-to-head
unless he uses kryptonite. OTOH, Superman vs Hyperion...

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MWinther
I believe it would be good to look at stuff that is considered well-designed,
analyze it and try to understand why it's considered to be well-designed
before randomly coming up with stuff in Photoshop.

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mnemonicfx
WOW, so many commenters are complaining about the blog design, instead of the
content of the post.

People should stop being so serious. People should take a look at things from
a different perspective, and gain positive values from it.

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pingou
"it’s ok for me to be ignorant about how to lay down a good interface, because
I’m a right side of the brain kind of person."

I think he meant "left side of the brain". Does he ?

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sigzero
Yes, because I so want to compare a fictional characters life to my own.

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Snark7
This blog post is worthless shit.

Edit: let me clarify. This blog post is written by an infantile, narcissistic
know-it-all and exudes the odor of vomit and feces. The fact that it appears
here lowers my esteem of HN and further confirms my suspicion that the
community is full of daft fight club-wannabe group-thinkers. Fuck you very
much.

