"we encourage programmers to become better professionals [by] staying lean on the... user interface, and user experience specialists"
That's a major difference between now and then. In the past 14 years there's been a huge shift towards better respecting UI design as a professional speciality. It definitely used to be a thing that programmers didn't respect as much, like sales & marketing. And software has gotten a lot better as a result.
As someone who wasn't a huge fan of working with UI I have to say over the past decade it's become arguably the most important part of most apps. It's a bit outdated but reading "Don't Make Me Think" http://amzn.to/1o3XMYy helped me a lot but I don't know of any other good books for programmers on UI/UX
"we encourage programmers to become better professionals [by] staying lean on the... user interface, and user experience specialists"
That's a major difference between now and then. In the past 14 years there's been a huge shift towards better respecting UI design as a professional speciality. It definitely used to be a thing that programmers didn't respect as much, like sales & marketing. And software has gotten a lot better as a result.