As a designer, I can certainly say there are tons of designers who ship ugly designs. Do those designs convert well? Sure. Is the client happy? Yep. Does that make them good designers? No, definitely not.
I think programming's a bit different - with an ugly design, the customers see it and know it's ugly. If a software application works fast and flawlessly, the customer sees that it just works, and it doesn't matter if the code has been neatly organized and arranged underneath.
