Design is a Search Problem [video]

Hmm, the first 10 minutes had my attention, and I was agreeing on his points that design is obviously subjective, and difficult to measure. With code, you can spend a week refactoring a section of your project, and conclude with certainty that it's better written. With design, you try to do the same, and get 60% of people agreeing it's the right direction, and 40% saying you're going the wrong way. This creates a lot of internal conflicts, and noise as you try to reach your goal. I was hoping this talk was going to go into some specifics of how we can measure great design, and how we can clear some of that noise and have more confidence in our decisions.

However, it seemed like the talk stopped after the intro, then it spent 30 minutes showcasing some odds and ends from his past work.

Nice talk. Also, first time saw Mike Bostock speaking (d3.js guy); I'd have put that in the title too, Mike is... relevant.

I couldn't watch this more than the first minute of it. I did design for the past ten years. I struggled all this time to come up with the best designs and solutions for my clients. Then I noticed that all design patterns are repeating. Eventually, I got bored. Picked up Django and Python programming in 2012 and never looked back. Now I'm starting with Objective-C (Cocoa). The fact that you can code your ideas and design solutions at the same time is such a relieve.

Design is not hard to do, but it's hard to master. It takes time, a lot of time. But once you get it then there's not much else to learn. There are design patterns repeating themselves, just like math formulas and theorems.