Should coders design?

Good on this guy for putting the work in to progress his design skills. Of course, the road to mastery stretches out ahead:

1. A book on grids is part of any visual design education. Grid Systems in Graphic Design is one of the starter books. There are some super basic errors in alignment here.
2. Attention needs to be paid to contrast, both as a visual design concern and an accessibility problem. Some of the text is almost illegible at normal viewing distances with perfect vision.
3. Gradients should be employed artfully and to accomplish a purpose.
4. The Day 11 notifications are partially obscuring essential navigation.
5. While a lot of attention has been paid to individual elements, some of the overall compositions appear almost random. Perhaps the biggest opportunity for improvement here is to learn about visual hierarchy, layout, gestalt, and generally how the brain processes visual information. The Design of Everyday Things is a great introduction to user psychology, here's a resource for visual hierarchy, and the squint test is a great tool.
6. The danger in having favorite typefaces is that we're tempted to apply them to everything, regardless of whether they apply or speak the content effectively. The Elements of Typographic Style is a good foundational text for what should be a long and fruitful exploration into the subject of typography.

If anyone asserts that coders don't have a knack for design and visual arts, direct them to the demo scene, show them what game developers and seasoned 3D graphics programmers leisurely do in their own time.

I am guilty of this as well– many designers have a sort of superiority complex around developers. Most designers aren't great developers so we assume that most developers are not great designers. It's an unfair and un-inclusive assumption that makes us look like ivory tower types.