Why on earth does this article pit "engineers" against "people"?

Where do they get off making no mention of the managers who refuse to pay for real QA? Who micromanage their designers? Who insist "make it blue"?

Why is there no mention of designers who seem never to have heard the adage "form follows function"?

I confess more than a little irritation that "engineers" are taking the rap for their PHBs, for the airheads in marketting who care more about releasing a product at the right moment than whether that product is ready for prime time, for designers who care more that there's a cohesive colorscheme than that it presents the user with a compelling metaphor.

It has never been my experience that it was the techs on a project who wanted to get the project done faster rather than better. 99 times out of 100, management has to pry the techs' fingers from the code ("No, really, code freezes NOW.") Similarly, it's not the techs saying "gee, why waste the money on real QA specialists."

In my experience, coders have immense respect for usability (even those who don't know how to make it themselves) and robustness, but are never taken seriously when they say "no, that's not how we should be doing it; it would be better if...". To blame them as a class for the failures in robustness and usability of their code is salt in the wound.