I've used a Bloomberg terminal and most of my social circle has as well. I guess maybe difficult isn't the right word to describe it,
but definitely uninviting on purpose. And a lot of my friends get a kick out of how uninviting it looks and how much they feel like a wizard using it. Theres definitely an aspect to the way it looks unrefined that make people love it, and I guess a better way of saying it might be that trying to emulate that by making something actually inaccessible and unrefined is not going to be successful
I think you're attributing ugliness "on purpose" incorrectly. No one at Bloomberg exclaims "Oh gee, let's make this more ugly, people will get a kick out of it."
It's just that they haven't bloated this app with CSS styles and other unnecessary aesthetics. It works. That's all.
