Comment by Zababa

The part on the Bauhaus movement is weird, and I'm not sure I agree about how the author thinks about users.

>What did previous generations of craftspeople do when everyday goods and buildings suddenly could be mass-produced by industrial processes? One reaction was to copy the style of old, and make the industry crank out widgets and buildings that at least looked like they were handcrafted.

Is this a reaction by craftspeople? I don't think it is, I think this was what industry people did?

>Countering this trend of historicism, an alternative approach was developed by the Bauhaus movement of the early 20th century. Instead of pitting factory workers against craftspeople, their stated goal was to have them work together, and redevelop the arts and crafts with industrial manufacturing processes in mind.

From what I understand the Bauhaus movement has/had a huge influence on modern architecture, which people tend to like less than traditional architecture [1]. It feels weird to have that followed by "Caring about quality and the user".

>The industrialization enabled lots of cheap plastic products, designed by people who didn’t take the time to think how they would be used and by whom – yet good industrial design is still a thing.

>And software like Wix and Next.js enabled the creation of lots of websites that load terribly slow and are not accessible – yet there are still practitioners of the front of the frontend out there.

I think the author really really really underestimates how important is it that something is "cheap". I personally like a lot having the option to use cheap and relatively good stuff, or pricier and better stuff, for most things.

This is a bit stretching the definition of "accessibility" but, I think in a way price should be thought as part of accessibility. If we consider that it's important that websites work well on slow networks, partially because not everywhere in the world has access to good network, partially because good networks cost money ; then I think we should consider that while a good website beats a bad website, sometimes a bad website beats no website. Sometimes a "cheap plastic product" means someone that can't buy the well designed product can still buy a product, and get started in a hobby.

This is pretty bad news for craftsmen I think, but as a software engineer that is very happy to be able to get into crochet or photo or cyanotypes or pottery or hiking for relatively cheap, I can't help but try to see the other side of software getting cheaper.

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026427511...