"GUIs just aren't interesting to create -- there's nothing challenging about creating them. For desktop apps, the normal thing to do these days isn't even to code them -- you drag and drop together a UI in something like Glade, Interface Builder, or whatever Visual Studio packages, and hook up handlers to talk to the core logic. It's mostly grunt work."
Oh, so very wrong. Yes, technically, the mechanics of making a GUI are not hard, but it's much like good technical writing. Deciding what goes where, what goes in, what stays, out; these are hard choices. Just look at almost any random shareware VB app. Fugly.
Agreed. My secret shame is that I love tinkering with GUI and trying new things. I have a deep dissatisfaction for most GUI apps out there, and I take a lot of time when I write my apps to try and get it right.
Most coders simply aren't meticulous enough when it comes to interfaces. "Slap a button on the window" or "just throw an item in the menu" without thought are not usable solutions.
This is especially problematic in client-side software where marketing is only interested in bullet-point features. The accessibility and workflow behind these features tend to be suspect at best, downright unusable at worst.
I wish more coders would be interested in these things. The people I talk to about interfaces are either disinterested hackers who'd rather work on backend code, or artists with no conceptual grasp of the technical underpinnings of GUI. Ugh.
I was talking from a coding point of view, since the post was asking about finding people to code a GUI. The challenge of designing a good UI is usually swamped by the need to write swaths of dumb code if you're actually coding GUIs. Design work is in a domain of it's own.
Oh, so very wrong. Yes, technically, the mechanics of making a GUI are not hard, but it's much like good technical writing. Deciding what goes where, what goes in, what stays, out; these are hard choices. Just look at almost any random shareware VB app. Fugly.