(author) me too, for a while. I always thought it was an excuse back in the 1990s when it was the response to most problems with Windows. But in the years since I have grown to appreciate that whilst it can be used to explain away a bug, it can also justify something that has had a lot of thought put behind it that you might not agree with.
The use of "This behavior is by design" as the title of my blog post was intentional, so that it could be interpreted as either positive or negative by the reader.
Building quality software is hard because it’s the mistakes and oversights that get noticed.
It’s much easier for someone to claim it’s “by design” than to try and fix it.