Have you seen emacs? It ain’t pretty. But it’s effective and works for a certain type of person. This aesthetic fits the emacs aesthetic. If this site was too polished and pretty, people would expect a polished and pretty product.

It indicates it won’t be easy to use this product, and it works to attract the correct user. If it was beautiful, people would have different expectations for the tool. This design indicates it’ll require work to set up and understand.

In the same way this site would never work for a nice macOS app, a Panic site wouldn’t work for this tool.