There are code styles that I just can’t bring myself to look at without having a major urge to hit re-format keys.

There are design styles that create in me such an overwhelming negative reaction that I want to hit… umm… there isn’t a “re-design” key, is there?

I am probably not the only software designer to react this way.

Design is a very vivid manifestation of a person’s way of thinking. Taking it in is like an attempt to transplant a part of someone’s mind into my own. And, just like immune system of a transplant patient would, in case of incompatibility, reject a donated liver, the immune system of my mind rejects the foreign design.

Now, I do have to work with other people’s designs all the time, despite this rejection. I know they give recent transplant patients immune-suppressants. I wonder if something like that could be arranged for me on the next project.

* * *
One could also think of this in terms of acute toxicity: the result of other designer’s intellectual metabolism may send me into anaphylactic shock.

Fragile little me