I think a big reason for worse-is-better is that simple "crappy" solutions very often have better evolvability characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E

I think a big reason for worse-is-better is that simple "crappy" solutions very often have better evolvability characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability "Elegant and beautiful" systems that are polished and perfect are often also brittle and monolithic and complex. Complex means hard to interoperate with, understand, and re-implement, and brittle means they can't change with the times. Complexity also favors single vendors due to the difficulty of interoperability and understanding. Xanadu would likely have ended up as Xanadu, Inc. with no third party implementations.