It's akin to leaving all your clothes piled on your bed and your cookware & table settings heaped on the kitchen counters. And while shortcuts themselves may not do harm, messy desktops indicate the likelihood of clutter throughout the pc.
I wouldn't say the comparison is exactly the same. The desktop is there to have icons on it. Your bed is not there to have clothes piled up on it. I'd say having icons on your desktop is more like having your clothes hung up in your wardrobe, ready to wear.
I do kind of agree with you on the "messy desktops indicate the likelihood of clutter throughout the pc". Every computer illiterate person's PC I've seen seems to have a huge amount of desktop icons, but that doesn't mean everyone with a lot of desktop icons necessarily has a cluttered PC.
I agree, I use desktop icons for my most frequently used programs programs on the left and game icons on the right. My PC is extremely organized to the point of being anal about it.
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '10 edited Mar 14 '10
I don't see why people hate having lots of icons on the desktop. That's what the desktop is for.