The HN hivemind sometimes likes vintage web development and web design so much it becomes really weird.

What I find weird is how many professional web developers contact me to ask what theme I’m using on my blog, a straight HTML website with 42 lines of inline CSS. I even was asked once with JS library I was using. (there is no JS, it’s a blog !)

None of those sending me those emails bothered to even look at the code. None even thought it was possible that this was NOT a "theme" somewhere on the web.

Yet I’m seen as the weird one in the industry.

I don't understand how a couple of naive emails translates to the disrespect of an entire class of people.

Well the parent expresses surprise at how many such emails they receive. I don't think the disrespect an entire class of people, they just say "it's not a couple naive emails, it's a lot more than I would expect".

It's a humble brag, not substantive.

You mentioned "professional web developers", not "professional UI designers".

That's the point.

I always find it frustrating to read HN comments expressing hatred towards mobile and whitespace-rich designs.

These designs exist based on user research, as most people find them pleasant and intuitive. I don't understand what's wrong with these design patterns.

Research by and on whom?

I don't doubt in the slightest that fancy mobile-y design styles look nice and are often intuitive at T=0, but we've lost a lot of throughput and information density by going for them as an industry.

It's the same as trying to write code on a phone, but backwards

All too often being 'mobile first' means being desktop last. It feels like a betrayal when UX becomes a zero sum tradeoff between new users and the enthusiast users who built the platform and community to be what it is. User research metrics will favor the new users every time because inexperienced users tend to be the majority. Eventually, the enthusiast users leave, causing many to wonder why the original culture and appeal of a website disappeared.

But none of that matters, the conversion rate went up 5% so the product manager still gets promoted :)

Microsoft went with whatever Windows 8 was based on user research too. Just because someone did a few interviews it doesn't make it good. :)

In this case I have to agree though. Linking to LinkedIn is simply ridiculous. What's next, linking to a high school yearbook?

All terrible UIs are said to be based on some amount of "user research" and are usually called "pleasant and intuitive" only by people promoting them.

Can you name a single failed interface that wasn't?

How would you like it if reading this comment downloaded a 2mb react bundle?

I have more respect for people that use hand-made HTML over some JS library that makes unreadable code

Being in love with the tech doesn't make someone a good CEO. Notably, sometimes standing too close to a problem prevents one from seeing solutions. Let's maybe start with actual admonisions against her (and her replacement's) relevant qualifications, achievements, or character (or lack thereof), instead of grabbing pitchforks and venting about how she's the wrong person to get a greenfield browser off the ground; simply put, that's not where Firefox or Mozilla is at right now.

It has nothing to do with tech. It's about a “pivot to data privacy” linking to one of the worse offender is terms of privacy invasion, that's just insane. It's as if say announced pivot to cloud computing and did so on a website hosted on AWS.

"Being in love with the tech doesn't make someone a good CEO."

I never said that this was a sufficient condition. I said it was a necessary condition.

We have spent decades trusting tech-illiterate CEO’s because "they knew the business and knowing the tech was useless".

See the result for yourself in every single company.

Really hard to tell if this is sarcasm or an extremely niche elitist.

When you pay 6M, I think you have the right to be slightly elitist. Isn't that the whole argument for such indecent salaries? "But they are one of a kind! We have to pay them that much otherwise we're screwed".

I'm not sure why people think tech asceticism would grant people the ability to successfully run a large company.

The decline of Firefox's popularity didn't happen because the CEO uses LinkedIn, arguably one could say that the resistance to trends would be more harmful than helpful if you're aiming to improve browser marketshare. The problem for Mozilla is that the internet is not mostly weird nerds anymore.

During Chrome's rise to popularity I don't think focusing on privacy was the popular thing to do, but the tides do seem to be turning and Mozilla could benefit from riding this wave again.