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> Because Worse is Better applies here as usual. It's not that simple. They lost for very pragmatic reasons: Smalltalk and Lisp were worse than Java in many wa

> Because Worse is Better applies here as usual. It's not that simple. They lost for very pragmatic reasons: Smalltalk and Lisp were worse than Java in many ways (even smaller than Java's initial implementations, Smalltalk's binary images were undeployable in production, these two languages are dynamically typed, etc...).

niftich 10y ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#History, scroll midway down: "During the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Smalltalk environments -- including support, training and add-ons -- were sold by two competing organizations: ParcPlace Systems and Digitalk, (...) Both firms struggled to take Smalltalk mainstream due to Smalltalk's substantial memory needs, limited run-time performance, and initial lack of supported connectivity to SQL-based relational database servers. (...)" "In 1995, ParcPlace and Digitalk merged into ParcPlace-Digitalk and then rebranded in 1997 as ObjectShare (...) The merged firm never managed to find an effective response to Java as to market positioning, and by 1997 its owners were looking to sell the business." There was also Strongtalk, a strongly typed variant of Smalltalk. The guys who wrote Self and the guys who wrote Strongtalk were both eventually acqui-hired by Sun and they were the ones who wrote HotSpot [2][3] [2] http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk
robotresearcher 10y ago
'Worse is Better' is exactly about pragmatic reasons prevailing over idealism. The 'MIT Way' is the stereotyped opposite approach, and LISP is a great example of that: in theory it's the 'right way', but in practice it fails to address some aspect of real world needs somehow.
- hota_mazi 10y ago
  I understand that but I still dislike the "Worse is Better" characterization, which sounds very condescending to me and which is usually put forward by proponents of the languages that lost, hinting that the reason for the outcome is because people are stupid and picked the worse alternative.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Looking at how Go has became successful, which is basically Java 1.0 or if you prefer Limbo merged with Oberon-2, it isn't very far from how people pick languages. At least the amount of insecure C code decreases, as it gets written in a safer language
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Well, the originator was a 'losing' LISP guy who admired the robustness and practical effects of the other approach: "However, I believe that worse-is-better, even in its strawman form, has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing, and that the New Jersey approach when used for software is a better approach than the MIT approach." "There is a final benefit to worse-is-better. Because a New Jersey language and system are not really powerful enough to build complex monolithic software, large systems must be designed to reuse components. Therefore, a tradition of integration springs up." Richard Gabriel https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

niftich 10y ago

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#History, scroll midway down: "During the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Smalltalk environments -- including support, training and add-ons -- were sold by two competing organizations: ParcPlace Systems and Digitalk, (...) Both firms struggled to take Smalltalk mainstream due to Smalltalk's substantial memory needs, limited run-time performance, and initial lack of supported connectivity to SQL-based relational database servers. (...)" "In 1995, ParcPlace and Digitalk merged into ParcPlace-Digitalk and then rebranded in 1997 as ObjectShare (...) The merged firm never managed to find an effective response to Java as to market positioning, and by 1997 its owners were looking to sell the business." There was also Strongtalk, a strongly typed variant of Smalltalk. The guys who wrote Self and the guys who wrote Strongtalk were both eventually acqui-hired by Sun and they were the ones who wrote HotSpot [2][3] [2] http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk

robotresearcher 10y ago

'Worse is Better' is exactly about pragmatic reasons prevailing over idealism. The 'MIT Way' is the stereotyped opposite approach, and LISP is a great example of that: in theory it's the 'right way', but in practice it fails to address some aspect of real world needs somehow.

hota_mazi 10y ago
I understand that but I still dislike the "Worse is Better" characterization, which sounds very condescending to me and which is usually put forward by proponents of the languages that lost, hinting that the reason for the outcome is because people are stupid and picked the worse alternative.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Looking at how Go has became successful, which is basically Java 1.0 or if you prefer Limbo merged with Oberon-2, it isn't very far from how people pick languages. At least the amount of insecure C code decreases, as it gets written in a safer language
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  Well, the originator was a 'losing' LISP guy who admired the robustness and practical effects of the other approach: "However, I believe that worse-is-better, even in its strawman form, has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing, and that the New Jersey approach when used for software is a better approach than the MIT approach." "There is a final benefit to worse-is-better. Because a New Jersey language and system are not really powerful enough to build complex monolithic software, large systems must be designed to reuse components. Therefore, a tradition of integration springs up." Richard Gabriel https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html