Re: should be beaten into UX developers with a heavy object
While I broadly agree with the points you and the original "heavy objects" poster make, I feel like the real core of the problem is cutting the flow of bad ideas coming in from "the powers that be" who insist on inserting themselves between the UX team and the customer, and the power struggles between bottom tier creatives that are chasing trends and fashion.
A good UX team's core work is side by side with the software architect, helping flesh out the requirements analysis of what the software needs to do and translating that to how a user can productively get their day to day work done. Then they can stencil out the parts where there is room for set dressing to keep the marketroids happy. That's where separating the UX and back end code is supposed to help. It's also where good UX programmers shine. It's a skill. Respect. In a heathy team, the person with the most say is the one that can put themselves in the workers shoes and make their live easier and efficient, and everyone else on the UI team should be following their lead.
Sadly, the risk became reality, making it cheaper to make UX changes created an incentive for endless cosmetic UX redesigns that hurt usability, as graphical tweaks happened with minor versions, but customer experience research was either done for major versions(out of date), totally decoupled from releases(waste of money AND out of date), or not done at all(ok, It IS the cheapest option).
So when in doubt give them a big shiny splash screen that only runs once. Or point to the corner and shout "Squirrel!" and then put out pastry service in the break room, roughly similar effect IMHO. Or you know, beatings with heavy objects from the backend team, but that's how you end up with a GUI that was clearly build by backend engineers that would have rather been doing ANYTHING else.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
