Don't drink the koolaid, man. You were right the first time. Calling it a "design language" is their way of obfuscating what they do, making it sound like it's something that only they can do. Therefore you, a mere programmer, should listen to them and do what they tell you, because you aren't qualified to "design" things. Hey, you didn't even know what a design language is!
I think we are witnessing the collision between two worlds: art and engineering. People that would have been designing books and magazines and advertisements and refrigerator facades a few years ago are now applying the same techniques to computer interfaces. They're actually trying to stake out their claim to this relatively young field, and they use their own jargon and obfuscated ideas to discourage non-designers from getting involved.
This is a problem because software interfaces are tools, not works of art that merely exist to be gazed upon. They should first be engineered, then made to look pretty. There is a reason you can walk into many places of business and see computer terminals with text-mode UIs, even monochrome ones: because they work and are efficient. Now those same interfaces could be made to look nicer by using high-res, color screens with nice widgets, without changing how they work--but hand that task to a designer and watch him pull back in disgust. No, it's got to look like a piece of modern, minimalist art, and all usable controls must be hidden away so as not to "distract" the user from what he "should be focusing on."
The average person who just wants a phone he can talk to people with and get directions with is left to suffer in bewilderment as he drowns in a river of constant, unnecessary changes. Every few weeks an app he uses suddenly looks and behaves differently--usually right when the person needs to use it for something, not relearn how to use it. This person is the collateral damage as the two worlds collide and deposit their flaming debris on the peasants below who can only take what they are given and try to fumble through.
Your comment is a great example of not understand what design is. Design is not something that is applied at the end, or something that is in conflict with function.
Your contempt is the product of ignorance. You'd benefit greatly from some formal design education.
The OP may not have, but the implication certainly is there. "They should first be engineered, then made to look pretty." That statement, by the way, is wrong. Engineers design, which ever way you look at it or phrase it. Design is the process of solving a problem, be it visual or otherwise. It follows that tools must first be designed and then the design is implemented. That design is seen as merely making something pretty says a lot about a few of the "engineers" that post here.
