perhaps, before the thread derails into a bunch of comments like the parent, we should consider that the article is not a comment on what your side-projects look like, those obviously should look however you please. rather the comment is directed at folks who want both great UX, and for their taste to reflected on the website, and quite frankly: some of you have absolutely no sense of what usability affordances require, not to mention _taste_.

Counterpoint: that's also wrong and those who give up the idea of their website being for "them" (a person or group) end up making websites that are bad. Jakob's law is often taken as support for the opposite position, but if Google looked like search engines circa 1998, no one would have switched.