alt Hacker NewsOP here!
I'll admit a lot of bias because I think design docs are extremely useful, but I find that when people hate design docs, it's almost always for one of two reasons:
1. The developer has worked on teams where design docs are viewed as a pointless ritual, so authors treat them as a pointless requirement and write bad docs and their teammates view them as pointless so they don't bother giving useful feedback, reinforcing everyone's belief that they're a pointless ritual.
2. The developer does not like other people questioning their engineering choices, and they know that it's harder for their teammates to push back on finished code than a design doc. Investing in the implementation before design changes the calculus to bias in favor of whatever's already implemented rather than what would have been the ideal implementation. Plus, it's harder for the team to review design decisions of 10k LOC than a 5-page design doc.
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Num. 2 especially relatable. A good mark of high quality professional is if he presents his plan before execution to hear feedback and comments - even if they are totally against his original idea, and he can then take this feedback and incorporate effectively in a re-design.
YES - and 3 the the assumption that it needs to be a certain length before it can be considered a design document. Esp. in the age of AI a little guidance to brainstorm on before a random project prompt goes a long way. (Not saying people that don't use design docs just code away thoughtlessly) - experience goes a long way too that's why there's success stories with and without design docs.
I think in the age of AI coding, these rationales are a bit outdated. And if you think they're not - I'm curious to know why you think so.
I think your framing is fair here. But I'd like to offer an even more complicated/nuanced take:
Designing in a group can be very difficult, and doing it well is a skill set that most people don't naturally have.
I think this explains your point 1. Why do people view designed docs as pointless? Because they really don't have a vision or model for what and effective and healthy collaborative design process would look like.