Currently in the industry - it’s exactly this. It’s a communication issue between the programming team and other teams, where designers freely speak for design, artists freely speak for art, etc. but it’s much harder for programmers to speak for implementation since it’s usually in reference to somebody else’s work, and when designers get offended or defensive or dismissive of the non-designer requesting 256 be changed to 255, then it stops being worth it.

For example, we made an absolutely mint UI backend, it was data driven with editors so anyone could whip up a new UI for the next feature without needing programmers. The design team were like “damn, I hear how complicated this thing was to build, so let’s make the programmers lives easier by not using it and only asking for simple bespoke stuff”. Telling them “the investment has already been paid for so please use it” was tantamount to telling them how to do their job while being ungrateful they had considered us, furthering the communication breakdown.

Yes I’m bitter and tired. It’s easier to use a short for 256 instead of arguing to have my opinion considered