>I just find it ugly vs Gnome or Mac. Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors.

IDK mate, I care more about the utility than the looks since I spend my time using the DE, not hanging it on my wall to admire its artistic attention to detail.

Like I'm sure those inconsistencies exist, but am I the only one whose brain just filters them out like they just don't exist? Kind of like how your brain filters out your nose from your eyesight and you only become aware of it when you look for it.

And to me and my use case and formed habits, utility wise KDE >>> Gnome by a wide margin, though KDE still has some annoyances I wish they would tackle, but for a free product, I can't complain.

That kind of thing is very difficult for visually oriented folks to filter out. I’m in that crowd. No matter how many times I see a poorly laid out dialog, it remains almost as abrasive as the first time I saw it. It can become a major distraction, especially as someone who’s capable of writing code.

I think there's some truth to this (utility is overall more important), but also some falsehood (looks matter too). Aesthetics affect your enthusiasm and therefore your productivity. This is why, for example, most people would rather work in a room with large glass windows overlooking a lake than in a room with a small window overlooking a factory even if they are functionally the same.

I agree with that. I really do not care about the inconsistencies - I did not even notice them until other people pointed them out. There are themes that look nice to me.

None of that really matters compared to usability and functionality. Most of the time I have one panel showing and everything else I can see is applications. The applications are a mix of things anyway.

"I don't care about this bad thing" isn't really a very good response to someone's "this is kinda bad" post, is it?

Obviously a lot of people don't care as much - KDE is a popular desktop!

Poor design can and does impact usability for a lot of users. If you care about the utility, you should care about e.g. wasted screen space with extraneous padding.