"The more opinions and ideologies I read from him, the more I'm convinced that he's doing more harm to this industry than good."

How so? Most of his opinions these days are aimed at designers working in-house with large tech companies or corporations, not the design industry in general.

This is a nice looking product, but side gripe: why doesn't anyone ever want to make an email client for Android? :(

Design tools (Stark, Fluid) - Cat Noone: http://www.heyimcat.com/

CreativeMornings isn't a conference but a monthly design event and that is founded/led by Tina Roth Eisenberg: https://www.swiss-miss.com/

Debbie Millman is a fantastic design writer: http://www.debbiemillman.com/books/ I devoured "How to think like a great graphic designer" when I first graduated.

Rachel Andrews is editor at Smashing Mag and has written quite a few books on web design, the more recent ones for A Book Apart: https://abookapart.com/products/the-new-css-layout

And speaking of A Book Apart, Karen McGrane, Erika Hall, and Lara Hogan are all great writers/speakers that have had work published by them.

Product Design Weekly - http://designweekly.atomic.io/

Cognitive UXD - http://cognitiveuxd.com/

This has actual use cases - for example, depressed individuals. It can be difficult for people with mental illness to remember - or motivate themselves enough - to do basic life things.

Seconding. I have the first version of this bag (with one strap instead of two) that I bought in 2015 - it's been to several countries and on a lot of commutes and is still holding up wonderfully.

Yep, I picked up on this because I'm also type 1 (high five!) Which is a shame because I actually WOULD use their products to help me manage my condition (perhaps not in the way they advertise, but a customer is a customer.) But this poor presentation of their understanding of diabetes completely turned me off the idea.

This is a nice way to sell products. The writing is a bit repetitive at times but they weave the three separate products together well, with a smooth layout.

But they lost credibility when they failed to identify what type of diabetes they are addressing. Different types have very different causes and anyone who walks in and starts proclaiming that they can prevent diabetes - all diabetes, as a whole - makes themselves look unknowledgeable. So, could be better.

"CSS and HTML (the languages themselves) are too unwieldy to be able to actually design with (is this a flexbox? what align-self? or is it a float?... )"

This comes closest to my reasoning. I learned how to code in HTML 5/CSS 3 years ago and have fully coded client's websites in the past. But I'm not good at languages in general (trying to learn Spanish did not go well for me) so being fluent in code is extremely difficult. Even the basic stuff. When I'm coding, I have to fully immerse myself in it (it's not like riding a bike, not at ALL) and that ends up overtaking my time as a designer - which is really the priority here.

Like others in this thread, I understand the concepts behind coding enough to work well with developers and understand how they are building my designs, and that feels like a better way of working.