As someone also living in the southeast (Charleston, SC), I'm really looking forward to seeing how this process goes.

Infuriated? No, taking 2 seconds to click out of an ad does not get my blood boiling, especially if the content which I'm about to get for free is quality. It's when you have to navigate through an ad to get to shitty content that is bothersome.

It is pretty disappointing to still see a lack of creative solutions when it comes to ad serving. Advertising is by most accounts interruption, which is totally fine, but I wish the timing of the interruptions was a bit more thought out rather than just hiding content behind an ad before you get even a glimpse of what you're being interrupted for, especially seeing how titles alone can be vague, if not totally misleading.

If you see writing code as simply factory-type production work, then you're just as narrow minded as the person who looks at "design" as simply aesthetics.

Gap analysis, Market analysis, User analytics, Specification, Product strategy, Information architecture, Understand psychology and HCI, Apply psychology and HCI, Sell a solution, Scenario planning, Create a product vision, Prototype, Wireframe, service design, Create personas, Do user research, User interviews, Do stakeholder management.

These are not designer skills. They're used in design, but not exclusive to people who:

Create comps, Art direction, Understand motion design, Understand colour theory, Understand typography

Many of the things you listed are shared responsibilities among product, design and tech. Building great products is a team sport after all.

I don't buy with this notion that if you know how to write code that makes you a mediocre designer.

Code is just a medium. How you apply it is what matters.

You can use it to solve computer science problems, architecture problems, product problems, or design problems.

When we talk about someone who's "good at design", what are we really talking about? Someone who can create a great visual representation of something? Or are we talking about someone who can craft a great solution based off some information?

While there may not be a ton of people who are good at creating visuals and code, there are a ton of people who craft great product solutions and write code, which if we're talking about "design" as more than aesthetics and visuals, makes that person a great designer.

Visuals and code could be considered two mutually exclusive disciplines. However the ability to craft strategy, understand research, create solutions to business/product/user problems, and write code are not.

I agree, but I don't see how that invalidates writing code as design.

If design is how products work, and code is what defines how products work, how is writing code not design?

I don't buy that retro-fitting a 'classical' designer into an engineering mindset is the right way to design a product. I would have to think that it would be much easier and more efficient for engineers to adopt a product design mindset, seeing as they already use a ton design concepts when writing code.

What makes you say that?

I believe what John Maeda is saying is that writing code is a primary design skill, not a complimentary one.

The idea is that more and more digital products, many with no visual interface, are designed with code.

It's not saying that writing code will help you design better; it's saying that in an increasing many instances, writing code is design.

Uhm...did R/GA suddenly move to Alabama and Chicago?

So developers should learn to design?

But really, this looks cool. Will definitely speed things up and let developers focus on the more complex interactions and what the app actually does without having to spend time on the layout and animation.