Ohh man. The usual crap: Desingers adding unneeded whitepace to show of their super skillz. These GUI designer bros should really limit their work to their own tools and leave the productive part of the world alone.

Everyone seems to be doing the same thing these days: bigger text, more padding and hiding things in submenus

not sure I approve. I spend enough time in Visual Studio that the tight spacing is an asset. I don't really have to think about or look at the icons too closely, it's more muscle memory than anything. Also, I use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible so the times I use menus I can afford an extra 100ms or so.