This question is really bugging me for few days as I had quite a conversation with a friend about this, He is a designer and thinks that without a proper design there is no way a coder can achieve a high quality product(in this case MyBB theme).
Also in the other hand a coder gives a lot more time and effort to make a design functional. So in the case of MyBB themes whom do you think is more important? A coder or a designer?
I am not sure whom to support as I am a designer and also coder. But I am slightly in favor of a coder. What you think?
You need both to create a succesful website.
A good design lets a person come to your site, a good website makes that person stay.
You can have a beautiful car, but it's no good without engine, and vice versa.
I agree with Ansem, design is in it's kind of way a form of marketing, Marketing is one reason because Justin Bieber is in most radios and talented people are on youtube when they don't sell french fries in fast foods
Exactly as Ansem said. You need both and both are equally important. Without a developer to build a designer's idea all you have is a pretty image. Without a designer you'll likely end up with a site looking like it comes from the first days of the internet.
MyBB's default theme looks like it was coded by a twelve year old in 1999, yet it's still a great product.
We had a huge discussion about something like this on WD, we all pretty much ended up agreeing that without design (aka any interface, even basic typography would be design) you can't have a site, and without programming (You couldn't even display a screenshot without the code) you can't have a site, so both are just as important.
Also, detailed UI and UX makes a better site, as well as well customized plugins. So again, both are needed.
(That said I personally think development is way harder)
I would say each one complement each other, at minimum.
I've always been pretty terrible at design, especially where web is concerned. I like to think I know what looks good, but actually making something that looks good is beyond me.
I am definitely a developer, and have put together near pixel-perfect websites from PSD files a designer has given me for my job.
Both aspects are dependent on each other. You can't really choose any one of them.
Actually you can and most firms have it set up that way because it stream lines the process and lets you get more sites out faster. Sure starting out you'll probably have to do a everything but once you get with a few others you can do Photoshop only or HTML/css only.