I share your love for UX and UI development. For what it's worth, the LXQt project could really use people like you dedicating a few hours now and then on drafting app designs, filing UX issues, etc. If you're ever interested, file an issue on the tracker[0] and cc me (@jleclanche) on it.

https://github.com/lxde/lxqt/issues

Let's not put all the fault on "younger developers".

I agree with you completely when you say that nowadays developers care more about new and shiny JS/ROR frameworks than anything else, because they are easy to use and allow them to ship thing overnight and possibly make even a bunch of money out of it.

But let's talk for a moment about the "grand pa's" efforts to welcome new developers. I speak out of personal experience here. In the past, when I was a very young and very new to development, with a limitless willingness to learn and help out doing my part in open source (and, more importantly, limitless time to do it), many of my attempts at trying to collaborate -- two of the most notable and worst experiences on my side being Tox and Fedora -- ended up with me getting mocked for even trying. And when I say mocked I mean it. I wasn't just normally (or, to use a blasphemous word, politely) turned down, which I would have understood. Someone of the Fedora project, when I had attempted to take part in an initiative intended to attract new developers, even went the extra mile basically telling me to go get screwed because I had never contributed before.

This happened when I was around 16 or something. Now I'm 27 and it takes a huge effort on my part to even just consider contributing to "old guard" open source projects. Nowadays, I still would never dare to participate in mailing lists/IRC channels because I'm still too afraid of being treated that way again.

I'm not trying to start a flame war. I just wish everybody would be more self-critic.