
The Icon Journey - nkjoep
https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/10/24/theicon
======
piaste
October 5th, 2017 is a day I will always remember. It was the day I became
cynical, bitter, and distraught. You may call it an overreaction for me to
feel this way simply because of the business practices of a single software
company, but let me explain what all of this means to me.

My life was thrown off balance and I never regained my footing after that day,
because I lost my ability to respect. An essential part of being human is to
feel respect for those who may or may not be deserving of it. But it is
equally human to feel painful disillusionment when someone or something you
respected turns out to be much less than you thought. But the level of
betrayal I felt when Microsoft announced their new VSCode icon tore something
from me that I'll never be able to recover. They tore away my ability to
respect anything, and they tore away my ability to feel human.

Microsoft was a company I respected, and their employees were people I looked
up to. Visual Studio, SQL Server, MS Office were all quality software products
that combined user friendliness with powerful features. These programs may
have been mass-market-oriented at times, but deep down they were always
sophisticated and crafted with a level of detail and skill that won
appreciation from power users all across the internet. VSCode was their newest
release, and the internet was in unanimous agreement that it was of
unparallelled quality. Following it's long awaited release, Microsoft began
releasing quality updates that raised the bar ever higher for text editors.

Then 1.17 was announced. This was not just an announcement of an update, it
was announcement of Microsoft's suicide. It was an update intended to
completely disregard any design principle, and instead shock the entire world
with its lunacy. Microsoft had gone off the deep end and raised the middle
finger to everybody who stayed loyal to them. They had announced that they
didn't care anymore, that they didn't care for their community, and they were
going to go out of their way to sabotage everything they had spent years
creating.

The pain I felt from this betrayal has destroyed me on an emotional level, and
has deprived me of my primary source of entertainment. No longer can I use
text editors without remembering the day I ceased mattering to people I
devoted myself to. Microsoft had not just destroyed me or their company, they
had destroyed the one force of stability in the world: Trust.

~~~
Waterluvian
This is the greatest form of satire because it's so absurd but so well done
that I'm actually doubting if you're serious or not. Well done.

------
dre85
I upgraded today and it took me a few seconds to figure out where to click to
open my editor. I have vscode right below sublime and the icon colors became
almost identical. It was a mini wtf moment.

One thing I've learned as a developer is that for most users, colors probably
matter more than anything else. You can build software that flies to the moon,
but if it looks like a terminal shell aka "scary black window" as my wife
calls it, it probably won't be a mainstream fav.

~~~
ordinaryperson
Ditto.

I use Sublime for quick-and-dirty tasks/editing large files, but VS Code when
I'm on a project. With the icons nearly identical I kept accidentally opening
the wrong program.

It's such a small, stupid thing but kept impeding my workflow.

~~~
nihonde
The canary version has a green icon, if you feel like it’s worth living
dangerously.

~~~
colejohnson66
Download the canary, extract the icon, then change the shortcut icon

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ibejoeb
I'm finding it hard to contribute constructively to the conversation because
it seems a little ridiculous from inception. Is this really a problem worthy
of an apology, or am I missing the inside joke?

>Changing from orange to blue doesn't address all of the issues, however it is
a step forward.

Just what I need the the next time I feel like I'm losing forward momentum.

~~~
azeirah
As someone who's written something like this before, it's impossible to tell.
In my personal case, I apologized thousandfold for a "major fuckup" and a
disgrace that the newest update of my software represented in my mind.

Now, a few weeks later, turns out my users had statistically doubled, a few
"outspoken people" (in fact just a previously-satisfied customer with an
obscure technical problem) had hurt my fragile fragile mind.

And oddly enough, sometimes there is someone who really does get hurt very
badly because of a small change like an icon. The world is weird, people are
weird, software is weird.

My answer to that remains

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
minimaxir
This submission is likely getting flagged because “who gives a damn about the
color of an icon?”, but as the article shows, _a lot of people do_.

~~~
6nf
Bikeshedding is alive and well

~~~
cyberferret
Weird, in all my decades of project management, I've never come across the
term 'bikeshedding' before, but it is the perfect explanation for the syndrome
I have seen hundreds of times in the past. Must be a US colloquial term that
is not in wide use here in Australia maybe?

Anyhow, thanks for expanding my urban vocabulary dictionary this morning.

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snomad
It was all the rage on Twitter when it changed. They should have just made it
a Halloween thing and walked it back next week :)

In fairness to the outcries, I still miss Outlook's Gold icon. More than once
have opened Outlook / Word when I meant the other.

~~~
gt_
Good idea with the Halloween suggestion but that would have made me more
upset. I would much prefer something reliable.

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mmgutz
It wasn't the color, it's the actual icon. I still don't know what it is. Is
that a door opening? The old blue icon was fine.

------
bitwize
Good. The orange icon was literally the worst thing to happen since they
colored Sonic's arms blue.

------
ovao
To members of the VS Code team: no apology necessary!

------
OJFord
A surprisingly interesting article for such a trivial and pointless topic.

~~~
nkjoep
It denotes attention to details from their side.

------
howeyc
I thought it was weird with so much feedback on the icon until I upgraded. It
is kinda strange the whole app (fonts, statusbar,...) is darker and blue, and
then the only thing orange is the icon.

~~~
blktiger
Plus, being used to a blue icon means everytime I go to switch applications I
have to remind myself what to look for.

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brandonhsiao
Am I the only one who finds the VSCode icon generally ugly as sin? This is
most striking on OS X, where it sits in a tray alongside a bunch of other
meticulously designed icons.

~~~
cyberferret
I agree - the 'tilt' does make it look like the odd stray dog in the pack, but
then again, maybe that was the intent of the MS designers in the first place?
;)

I must admit being a little thrown when I upgraded VS Code a week ago and
suddenly noticed the very different icon. I immediately thought "Ugh, I like
the old icon better". But by the end of the day, I was actually struggling to
remember that the old icon actually looked like. I was thinking "I know it was
dark blue, but what WAS it actually again???"

Just goes to show that at least in THIS old programmers mind, I rely on colour
matching far more than shapes to navigate to important apps that I use...

------
gt_
The old icon was great. Hopefully they just move it back. I love VS Code but
this obsessive flat design stuff kills me.

------
JazzXP
I downloaded the Insiders just to have the green icon. While I have no issues
with the icon or the colour directly, I found that it was too similar to
Sublime Text which sits next to it on my quick launch. Yes, I could have
changed the icon manually, but I'm lazy.

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pkamb
Almost every app icon I use for development on OS X is blue. Xcode,
SourceTree, iOS Simulator, Safari, Mail, Messages. Drives me crazy in the CMD-
Tab switcher.

------
m00s3
I'm just gonna say I liked the orange icon. It is different than the other
icons in my task switcher, which on a Mac, are predominantly blue.

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downrightmike
#TeamOrange

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foobarandgrill
I guess I'm one of the few people that prefer the orange icon.

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atesti
Is there a link to the old icon?

