This redesign is what happens when a designer dabbles in sales without understanding what he is doing. The original zappos site does not have massive and obvious sales pitches, and the redesign brings in two huge and annoying sales pitches.

Just because you know how to style html and use photoshop does not mean you are an expert in selling goods to customers. This designer just added two huge banners that will likely lose the company a large amount of money.

Testimonials are turn-offs. Don't put two huge testimonials at the top of the page, your website looks then like an advert. And people don't love companies that are trying to force a product down their throat.

This redesign actually makes me angry - it's rare that a redesign has this ability to do that. So, designer, if the aim of your redesign was to create customer rage, then feel free to touch your nipples in ecstasy, because you succeeded.

You're missing the OP's point, which (not to put words in the OP's mouth) is:

1 - A design does not exist in a vacuum. It is there to do something (in this case, sell shoes). It is impossible to separate good design from its contextual purpose - and in this case he is suggesting that you are (apparently) unqualified to fairly judge Zappos' design, not being from a sales background and all. Assuming you don't have sales experience, I would be inclined to agree.

2 - Zappos' purpose is to make money selling shoes. Would your UI push more sales? If so, then there's cause to look at your design. If your UI will decrease sales, then why in the flipping world would anyone consider your design? There is also no such thing as "no difference" - all UI changes, however minor, impact conversion and sales.

Personally I object to the presumptuous and condescending tone that this redesign is done in - you're assuming that Zappos is staffed by a team of idiots who couldn't care less about clean web UI. I don't work for Zappos, but given their success (and their site) I highly doubt this is the case. Making something web-2.0 does not automatically make it better.

I also happen to agree with OP that the testimonials are annoying and interrupt flow - customers are here to look at the store's offerings, not hear testimonials. Put it somewhere less intrusive. If I walk into a restaurant, I'd expect to hear about the menu - not what their ratings is on Yelp. The testimonial is also so often abused by nefarious ne'er-do-goods that its mere presence raises suspicion in users.

Your search box also removes functionality by completely tossing out search parameters - which IMHO demonstrates your lack of consideration for the specifics business requirements of the company (something many UX people do but will never own up to). The "search by" feature I would gather is very important to shoe buyers.

This post is already getting long, but I need to hit another point: you started your entire post with a very confrontational "why is your website a confusing mess"?

And then you fail to make any meaningful changes to the UI. The tab-based navigation is identical save for some padding and sizing changes. The product selection columns are identical. The search box is identical save for your decision to remove search features. The general layout is identical, in fact, save for your decision to add in the testimonials - how does this reduce confusion, exactly?

If you're going to make loud, bold-letter claims about the confusion inherent in a design, at least make the effort to change the design, as opposed to give it a slick font-and-button-texture makeover?

It doesn't seem surprising to me. Doing anything really hard is as much about mastering oneself as about domain knowledge. You'd hear similar things from a lot of top athletes, for example.

And while "entrepreneurship" in general is not necessarily hard, the path Slava has chosen is. It's not easy to start a new database company.

He deserves better than snarky one-liners.

This is a scam. Take a look at the toc to see how many pages are devoted to the interpreter, the VM and so on. It is impossible to learn how to write a complete interpreter or compiler, (leave alone VMs etc) in such a small "book".

The blurb says

"Become the next Guido Van Rossum, Matz, Larry Wall or Rasmus Lerdorf by creating your own revolutionary programming language in a few days"

yeah right! :-D.

If anyone is really interested in learning to build an interpreter or compiler, here is a book list to work through in order.

(1) SICP (do all the exercises in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). There is an incredible amount of learning there. Once you've done this, you can write a basic interpreter/compiler for languages with s-expression syntax. [The semantics can be anything you imagine]

(2) Essentials of Programming Languages. This will teach you how many language features work (lazy evaluation, object systems, static type systems ..)

(3) Lisp in Small Pieces - how to implement byte code compilers, macro systems, compilation to C, lots of good stuff here.

(4) A book on lexing and parsing so you can give your language any syntax you want. I prefer Modern Compiler Design by Gries. If you understand the first three chapters you can write your own lex/yacc equivalents. (the book has a lot more to it than these chapters, but it is the best I've seen on lexing/parsing).

(5) Now take a look at the source of your favorite language. ((Lua and the lcc compiler (it even has a book explaining its design) in particular, are very educational).

(6) If you are REALLY serious about optimization, Steve Muchnick's book, Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation.

I have all these books and have derived an incredible amount of learning and joy from them.

yes it is a bit of work, but it is fascinating journey. Enjoy.

EDIT: If you want to go deep into type systems (say you want to grok Haskell's type system from first principles, (or add OCAML like modules to your language, say) Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages - You are in good shape to work through this after you've finished EOPL

I had a friend in college (I'll call Rob) who would shoot hoops, play golf, or play table tennis with anyone at any time. But he would never play anything else. He wouldn't play touch football, softball, bridge, or even shoot a game of pool. I could never understand it until I finally figured it out: he wouldn't play anything unless he knew that he would win. How sad, I thought.

I just realized (to my horror) that years later, I am just like him. I don't push boundaries like I used to. I don't call on that extra customer, volunteer for that project, or apply to programs like yc if I think there is any chance I won't win. There's always a reason: the software is missing too much, the demo sucks, there are 14 other things that have to be done first,... You get the picture.

I never thought of this as "fear of failure". I just got so used to succeeding in everything I did that I didn't want to do anything else where I didn't succeed. I became Rob without even realizing it.

I've got to change this stinkin' thinkin'. A good failure would probably do me good. Or maybe I should just try something I would have never imagined a month ago.

Thanks OP, for the perspective.

Every time I read "terabyte", I have to pause, because my brain goes "That's gigantic!" and then a little voice says, "It's the same size as the hard disk in my desktop...it cost $89."

I have the same sort of weird mental disconnect with SD cards. It's just hard to fathom 32GB of data fitting into something about the size of a quarter.

I always enjoy the wholly baseless wild speculation that arrives during the week before an Apple event.

I'm not seeing the conspiracy, sorry. What evidence is there that MS selling patents to AST was part of an evil plan? AIUI, AST (Allied Security Trust) isn't known as a patent troll.

AST members include: Verizon, Cisco, Google, Telefon AB L.M., Ericsson, HP. Source:

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/patent/allied-secur...

If "not inviting" OIN was part of the conspiracy, surely a group that included Google shouldn't have been included either.

AST on their website even assert that they don't assert patents against infringers:

> Will AST assert these patents against infringers?

> No. The purpose of AST is to provide the freedom to sell products and cost reduction. Member companies who wish to participate in a particular patent purchase are granted a worldwide non-exclusive patent license.

Source: http://www.alliedsecuritytrust.com/q-and-a.html

This is a non-story.

This entrepreneurship as self-improvement trope is getting downright weird.

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature.

I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing, so it is orthogonal to Church-Turing.

Whether it is achieved will depend on economic forces. I don't see much economic value in making conscious computers, or things which seem to be down that line. So I expect consciousness will come out of pure research (perhaps within a corporation, like IBM), well after computers have exceeded the raw processing power needed.

Because they will be so different from humans, it will have to demonstrate a significantly higher degree of consciousness than a human needs to in order for most people to be comfortable with the term.