Funny how people get weird about style issues. Me too, I guess. There's a certain territorial aspect to it. Combined with the intuitive Rightness of one style over another... the Rightness creates conflict, the intuition means people can't argue very usefully about it.

Seeing this, of course people decide that style isn't a useful thing to discuss. They get short about it, seeing it as troll talk.

I don't think that's quite right, though. I like systems because they feel right. I design systems intuitively -- and I think that's the way good design has to be done. You need to envision the entire thing, which has a certain gestalt aspect to it. You can't work towards a great design, except by experimentation and iteration. Even then at some point you simply have to arrive at it. It's all about feel. So I think the feel of something is very important. An elegant system feels good. That's pretty important.