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Comment by sgdesign | Hacker News Reader

Like everybody, I've been hearing good things about Go lately. But although I'm curious about the language, its homepage (http://golang.org/) doesn't make a great impression. It looks very amateurish and unappealing.

And you can pretty much say the same thing about http://www.scala-lang.org/ and http://clojure.org/

It might not seem like a big deal, but it would certainly not hurt a language's popularity to have a slightly nicer site. Unless of course these languages don't want to become popular.

Edit: I actually can't find a single language site that looks good. So maybe bashing Go for this is unfair, although I still find the Go site particularly bad.

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As someone who created a language that's gotten some momentum in the past year [http://julialang.org/] and also drew the short straw and ended up making the web site, I can say that core contributors to programming languages (especially scientific ones) seem not to be particularly interested in making pretty web pages. So I kept it as minimal as possible, starting from Tom Preston-Warner's blog [http://tom.preston-werner.com].

Could we hire a designer? Sure. But that's so far down our list of priorities, it's not even funny. And who's going to pay for it? Also, even the time spent dealing with a designer (finding one, negotiating cost, signing contracts, providing feedback, etc.) is time I could be spending on making crucial design decisions, closing issues, improving core language functionality, and writing documentation. That's probably why more mature languages tend to have fancier websites. The Go guys are still super busy making Go awesome!

Even if we hired a designer who made a lovely site, then someone has to maintain it. Programming languages are living, evolving things, and their web sites change. You know what's worse than a bare bones web site? A fancy designer-made web site with a bunch of changes subsequently added by an amateur who doesn't know what the hell they're doing (me).

So for now, I think we'll keep it minimalist.

Sometimes nicer is worse. When using the website of a language I want to focus only on information-I am on a mission. Things need to be in the right places, typography should be spartan and correct. It is a usability problem, not about appeal per se. The people coding circles around you often wouldn't notice if the logo of their language was in Comic Sans.

To restore your faith a bit: http://www.iolanguage.com/

I am not sure what you find unappealing about those websites, but I find Go’s website very easy to navigate and for browsing the standard library. When looking for software to depend on, I think I prefer a visual design that does not attempt to be in any way “mysterious,” but rather simple and predictable.

How do you equate "mysterious" with good visual design?

I made an uneducated guess for why sgdesign disliked golang.org’s web design. I think an unearthly visual design is more appropriate for adventure games, less so for software tools. That does not mean that only “mysterious” visual design is good visual design.

I think that Scala's doc website is actually pretty nice.

http://docs.scala-lang.org/

With that being said, I agree with the others...I prefer a simple and easy layout like Go's website over some pretty typography and new hip layout. Most people going to the website are going for API docs I would assume, and you want API docs to be fast loading and minimal.

Though, it's kind of hard to make things look downright bad when you're using bootstrap.

Either way, you're right. Short, readable, organized, and fast to load are the most important things in API docs, and any design candy is (should be) far lower in priority.

As usual beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. I personally like the Go website. Simple and reduced.

>I actually can't find a single language site that looks good

Are you a graphic designer or something? You must surely speak for some very superficial, cosmetic issues.

Those websites you mention are mighty fine, especially Go's is very well organized.

As a matter of fact, I am "a graphic designer or something".

And yes, you're right, those sites all look great. In fact I might just print out screenshots of them and hang them on my wall.

But seriously, I know HN is focused on technology, but we can't pretend like there's no such thing as good graphic design and that these sites are just fine.

>As a matter of fact, I am "a graphic designer or something".

I never would have guessed. Oh, wait...

>And yes, you're right, those sites all look great. In fact I might just print out screenshots of them and hang them on my wall.

It's not the "hang on my wall" looking great that matters, it's "I can find what I need with minimum fuss" looking great...

There are many sites created by graphic designers that look great but have no substance. There are plenty of sites created by engineers that have great information but no style. Luckily, those sites tend to be catered to people who like their pros and don't mind their cons.

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