Maybe the problem is precisely the target audience. The current site only appeals to a very specific kind of people.
What are some specific objections that you have with the Go website?
-There is no logo to establish a brand identity
- The mascot looks amateurish
- There is no thought given to typograph or colors. Contrast this with the Git site where, for example, body copy is not pure black to avoid a harsh contrast.
- The documentation uses a fluid width layout which hurts readability on wide screens
Without taking into account this context, your feedback is frankly about as closed minded and generally insulting as claiming that XKCD (or hell: anything by Don Hertzfeldt, which is probably an even stronger extreme case) is poorly executed because the artwork is likewise "amateurish" to someone used to full-color 3D rendered 60 fps animation (or hell: an actual HD video). However, these people have managed to entrench an entire genre of art that now others try to invoke in their own audiences.
Personally, I find the git-scm.com website to be full of way too much clipart and not enough personality; to the extent to which there is personality, I might call it "Web 2.0 with a hint of retro-corporate", which is highly awkward as I have always felt git represented something grungier, certainly "harsher": tied to ideas like raw power and distributed anti-disestablishment as opposed to control or simplicity. However, someone liked that website, and apparently you do. I find http://darcs.net/ much better at first glance, for a version control tool.
The original author (edit: apparently, also you) even liked the Firebase website, which has always turned me off as something designed to attract people who don't know what they are doing: it feels too "Web 2.0" and has much too strong an emphasis on "nothing to something" as opposed to "something to something great" to be a product to which I'd trust storing my data. Of course: I'm not in their target market, as I don't need their service and in fact "know too much" and can nitpick how they built it; they are targeting people who don't know enough to build backends, and that design thereby probably works for them. I thereby can't negatively judge their website without paying attention to that context.
tl;dr different strokes for different folks
I would assume programmers care about things like:
- How can I get to the documentation fast - How can I start playing around with the language - What are the language features - How do I install the language and how do I use it
all these things are easily accessible through the golang website in my opinion.
I agree with this, but I still think the golang documentation is well designed for usability. If you compare this page - http://golang.org/ref/spec - with this page - http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config, you'll see that the golang site has limited the font and background to a few non-glaring colors.
The red text on the git-scm site is just awful. I can scan the golang pages easily, but a page like this - http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-t... - is too visually distracting.
> But why couldn't you have both?! That's what I mean when I'm talking about a false dichotomy, you're just using a strawman argument.
You can't have both because people don't have unlimited amount of time and resources. I'm not sure why I have to explain this.
- There is no logo to establish a brand identity.
- The mascot looks amateurish.
- There is no thought given to typograph or colors.
- The documentation uses a fluid width layout which hurts readability on wide screens.
Its even balanced with the playful sense of minimalism of the language itself.
The Gopher is the logo and our brand identity. He was designed by Renée French, an award-winning illustrator. Perhaps you think his presence is amateurish, but I disagree. We are professionals, but we are also a community and we like fun. The gopher is emblematic of Go as a project.
I gave plenty of thought to the typography and colors. There is a spare color palette, and I chose complimentary blues and yellows. I chose a consistent set of font sizes. You may have a different aesthetic taste to me, but you can't say that no thought was given. Also, the darkest text on golang.org is #222. There is no pure black.
The previous design had a max-width for all docs, but it was widely criticized by users of the site. That's why I removed it in the redesign. The users are happy, and I'm not one to disagree with them. If you find it hard to read you can just make your browser window narrower. This was a UX decision.
Ultimately the site is a resource and I certainly spent more time concentrating on UX than the visual appearance. It may be simple and it may not have enough gradients (or whatever) for your tastes, but the design is consistent and well thought out.
Thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts. I know your heart is in the right place, but in the end you did come across as presumptuous and holier than thou.
It doesn't look glossy or trendy but then I don't think it needs to either or that the lack of those things indicates a bad design.