I feel this way too. I even kind of like the no bullshit design ("design") on PHP's site as well. It's fast and it's clear and it makes me reminisce about the times when I didn't need a top of the line computer just to surf the fucking web.
They're a reflection of the people who create them (rimshot).
Honestly, I blame Unix/Gnu (http://www.gnu.org/). Most programmers are command-line oriented and think GUIs are a distraction. It doesn't bother them that most newbies have no means of discovering features absent menus and suchlike, and that means design takes a backseat on their websites too.
I personally thought the go website was a lot better than most; at least it's (semantically) accessible, even if it's cartoonish.
I agree with you, and would add that the precursor to the modern full-featured browser-based WWW was a CLI-based web (Lynx et. all), whereby the only means of formatting text were akin to what you get out of a word processor (linebreaks, bold, italics, etc.).
Also, most programmers (like those making the languages) aren't designers, and when they try to be, very bad things can happen[1]. Could they hire a designer? Probably not, seeing as most of those projects are FOSS, and the maintainers get paid nothing for their efforts.
There's also the fact that the maintainers of those languages, and likely a majority of the users, would prefer development efforts be focused on the language itself and not its website.
The current Go homepage is surprisingly good functionally and aesthetically. PHP, Clojure, Haskell sites look like monolithic corporate website templates aesthetically.
The main problem is with the author who can't appreciate good design when it doesn't fit his trendy aesthetic sensibilities.
> Having the PHP site in your design portfolio would open doors with a lot of people.
That's true for beginners with a weak portfolio. Experienced ones don't care about php, they have commercial projects in there.
> Plus, a lot of designers are already spending their time working for free anyway. If you don’t believe me, just look at the number of Instagram redesigns or iTunes icons on Dribbble.
Hey, let's try to find a programmer who will code your website for free. Lots of them do stuff for free anyway, just look on github and bitbucket.
Now seriously (I am aware there are a lot of generalizations in there, but I think they are not far from the most common):
The thing is, just like coders publish opensource, designers publish icons and redux because it's their cause, their branch, their market. And just like you wouldn't code a random designer's project while publishing lots of libraries for other programmers, he won't design yours while publishing fonts and icons elswhere to prove something.
Second, while programming in commitee works (in general), webdesign by commitee doesn't and always results in crap. And experienced designers have the 'my way or the highway' approach anyway.
Third, most designers just don't get opensource quite well, while most opensource gurus just don't get design quite well. The former ones don't feel why they should do it, the latter ones don't feel the need to make use of the ones who would even if they are there.
If a designer finds a programmer who will work for free, 99% chance he's very unexperienced. The same comes to getting a designer for free.
If you are interested, I would love to team up with you to contribute an open source design and I will do the markup. As a developer, I have long hated the design of many sites. After the awesome redesign of http://git-scm.com/ I wanted to make contribute another design to one of the terrible OSS sites that are out there. What do you say, are you interested in teaming up?
It's not about being "ugly" and needing help to become "beautiful". It's what you are trying to tell people.
Partly, it's a good thing if these sites look a bit amateurish, because they should look grassroots. It should look like: wow, I can join this. It should look authentic.
A nice example of this is www.drupal.org (where you can join) versus www.drupal.com (where you should "buy").
The new Git website is very nice. But is also a very mature project. It doesn't need help from thousands of people. It needs a lot of consumers and maybe some brilliant minds to share their
ideas.
What the Go website tells: this is a very young project (not even a logo), we have some backing from Google (hence the name and the colours), we have something good (by calling it "easy" and "reliable"), but we could need your help (by still calling it "The Project") and you might want to try (look you can even try it top-left on our homepage) this if you are curious and want to have fun (see our goofy, eye-rolling, mascot).
It's like an unwritten maxim: the more technical a site is, the more basic its design. A corollary might be: the more in-demand (famous) a person is, the more basic their site will be.
Making a site look fashionable (and web design is really like the clothes industry in that sense) will require the authors to revisit it avery year or so, whenever the design fad du jour changes.
While black text on white background is like jeans and t-shirts - not too hip, but always acceptable.
What a stupid article. Looking pretty is far less important than being functional. And his site is the perfect example of that; it looked pretty, but the content only took up a 50% column of the total viewable space (and that's without having my browser window set to full screen). His site would be terrible for productivity driven sites like PHP's manual.
Also I reject his premiss that language sites need to be pretty to attract developers. You pick a language based on it's suitability for a project, not whether it has lashes of CSS3 and bespoke type-faces. To even suggest otherwise is painfully superficial.
There's an old adage: less is more. And I think that's very true when discussing sites that are designed to serve content rather than sell content.
I'm confused if you're accusing me of hating on PHP, or Ruby & Python, or all of them. In any case I'm sure you know what I mean, there's clearly a move away from PHP and towards Ruby & Python, at least in these parts.
How can you give the PHP site a hard time for looking old and then praise Python's modified WikiMedia layout?
The point of all of these sites is to maximize functionality and make language information easy to get at. All that maters is UX, graphical niceties don't improve on that, and no one serious about learning a new language is really going to be dissuaded by "ugliness".
But the real answer to the title question is simple: They're made by programmers, not designers.
> no one serious about learning a new language is really going to be dissuaded by "ugliness"
What about people who are not serious? As I said in my post, this "ugliness" acts as a filter to turn away non-experts. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view, I personally think it's bad.
I think the Python Software Foundation was asking for redesign proposals for the Python site a while ago; so we might see some improvements for the Python site. I don't find the Python site particularly ugly, but I think the docs could improve a lot. Same goes for a lot of other python frameworks that use the default Sphinx template.
Design is irrelevant when it comes to programing sites. We programmers want to get straight to the code and some times design becomes a distraction. I have no issues with the Go site and even the PHP site. It is great until I can quickly find what I'm looking for.
[+] [-] olalonde|13 years ago|reply
Just a nitpick but PHP (1995) is not older than Ruby (1995) or Python (1991).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
[+] [-] coldarchon|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hermanhermitage|13 years ago|reply
The Go site looks fine to me, whilst https://github.com/404 is downright ugly.
EDIT: I notice how the OP link is a horrid design too. This has to be a troll.
[+] [-] gebe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numbnuts|13 years ago|reply
What don't you like about the OP's site? It's certainly "hip and modern" but what makes it horrid?
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|13 years ago|reply
Honestly, I blame Unix/Gnu (http://www.gnu.org/). Most programmers are command-line oriented and think GUIs are a distraction. It doesn't bother them that most newbies have no means of discovering features absent menus and suchlike, and that means design takes a backseat on their websites too.
I personally thought the go website was a lot better than most; at least it's (semantically) accessible, even if it's cartoonish.
[+] [-] k3n|13 years ago|reply
Also, most programmers (like those making the languages) aren't designers, and when they try to be, very bad things can happen[1]. Could they hire a designer? Probably not, seeing as most of those projects are FOSS, and the maintainers get paid nothing for their efforts.
There's also the fact that the maintainers of those languages, and likely a majority of the users, would prefer development efforts be focused on the language itself and not its website.
[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/this-is-what-happen...
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Detrus|13 years ago|reply
The main problem is with the author who can't appreciate good design when it doesn't fit his trendy aesthetic sensibilities.
[+] [-] archgoon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zalew|13 years ago|reply
That's true for beginners with a weak portfolio. Experienced ones don't care about php, they have commercial projects in there.
> Plus, a lot of designers are already spending their time working for free anyway. If you don’t believe me, just look at the number of Instagram redesigns or iTunes icons on Dribbble.
Hey, let's try to find a programmer who will code your website for free. Lots of them do stuff for free anyway, just look on github and bitbucket.
Now seriously (I am aware there are a lot of generalizations in there, but I think they are not far from the most common):
The thing is, just like coders publish opensource, designers publish icons and redux because it's their cause, their branch, their market. And just like you wouldn't code a random designer's project while publishing lots of libraries for other programmers, he won't design yours while publishing fonts and icons elswhere to prove something.
Second, while programming in commitee works (in general), webdesign by commitee doesn't and always results in crap. And experienced designers have the 'my way or the highway' approach anyway.
Third, most designers just don't get opensource quite well, while most opensource gurus just don't get design quite well. The former ones don't feel why they should do it, the latter ones don't feel the need to make use of the ones who would even if they are there.
If a designer finds a programmer who will work for free, 99% chance he's very unexperienced. The same comes to getting a designer for free.
ps. let's see how the Django redesign works out https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django-de...
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twog|13 years ago|reply
If you are interested, I would love to team up with you to contribute an open source design and I will do the markup. As a developer, I have long hated the design of many sites. After the awesome redesign of http://git-scm.com/ I wanted to make contribute another design to one of the terrible OSS sites that are out there. What do you say, are you interested in teaming up?
[+] [-] twog|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alexandervn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] halefx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alexandervn|13 years ago|reply
Partly, it's a good thing if these sites look a bit amateurish, because they should look grassroots. It should look like: wow, I can join this. It should look authentic.
A nice example of this is www.drupal.org (where you can join) versus www.drupal.com (where you should "buy").
The new Git website is very nice. But is also a very mature project. It doesn't need help from thousands of people. It needs a lot of consumers and maybe some brilliant minds to share their ideas.
What the Go website tells: this is a very young project (not even a logo), we have some backing from Google (hence the name and the colours), we have something good (by calling it "easy" and "reliable"), but we could need your help (by still calling it "The Project") and you might want to try (look you can even try it top-left on our homepage) this if you are curious and want to have fun (see our goofy, eye-rolling, mascot).
[+] [-] k3n|13 years ago|reply
Here's some "homepages" from programming gurus:
Dennis Ritchie: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/
Brian Kernighan: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/
Bjarne Stroustrup: http://www.stroustrup.com/
Richard Stallman: http://stallman.org/
[+] [-] minikomi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zalew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luriel|13 years ago|reply
http://tour.golang.org
[+] [-] melvinmt|13 years ago|reply
Ergo, I can't be bothered to look at funny 404 cartoons when I'm trying to read documentation.
[+] [-] saiko-chriskun|13 years ago|reply
and what exactly does a 404 page have to do with a page with actual content.
[+] [-] the_cat_kittles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yen223|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoka9|13 years ago|reply
Making a site look fashionable (and web design is really like the clothes industry in that sense) will require the authors to revisit it avery year or so, whenever the design fad du jour changes.
While black text on white background is like jeans and t-shirts - not too hip, but always acceptable.
[+] [-] laumars|13 years ago|reply
Also I reject his premiss that language sites need to be pretty to attract developers. You pick a language based on it's suitability for a project, not whether it has lashes of CSS3 and bespoke type-faces. To even suggest otherwise is painfully superficial.
There's an old adage: less is more. And I think that's very true when discussing sites that are designed to serve content rather than sell content.
[+] [-] maratd|13 years ago|reply
> And there’s some truth to this.
> More modern languages like Python or Ruby have somewhat decent sites.
Ruby and Python were both around way before PHP. Get your story straight, Mr. Hater.
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChiperSoft|13 years ago|reply
The point of all of these sites is to maximize functionality and make language information easy to get at. All that maters is UX, graphical niceties don't improve on that, and no one serious about learning a new language is really going to be dissuaded by "ugliness".
But the real answer to the title question is simple: They're made by programmers, not designers.
[+] [-] yen223|13 years ago|reply
- The first thing the user sees is a massive wall of text. The whole site looks visually cluttered. Everything is arranged haphazardly.
- The more useful parts (e.g. the introduction, documentation links, download links) are hidden away in small corners of the site.
- The relatively useless Events and News sections take up >80% of the site.
Python's site looks slightly better, but not by much.
[+] [-] sgdesign|13 years ago|reply
What about people who are not serious? As I said in my post, this "ugliness" acts as a filter to turn away non-experts. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view, I personally think it's bad.
[+] [-] freestylesno|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samrat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Akram|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frechg|13 years ago|reply