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I've always found it interesting how Xanadu was basically The Right Thing to WWW's Worse Is Better. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better https://en.wi

by gvx 9y ago

I've always found it interesting how Xanadu was basically The Right Thing to WWW's Worse Is Better. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better)

mceoin 9y ago
"Innovation is path dependent", and in the case of the World Wide Web, "done" really was better than perfect.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  > "Innovation is path dependent" Citation needed. Kidding aside, is this paper [0] the source for your quote? Thanks [0] https://www.princeton.edu/~reddings/pubpapers/PathDepIER2002.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~reddings/pubpapers/PathDepIER2002...
theamk 9y ago
... and in Xanadu's case, The Right Thing requires the documents to be never deleted. I do not think this is a good example of the Worse Is Better principle, it is more like "you must think of a real world when designing systems"
- gvx 9y ago
  I agree it's not a perfect metaphor. I do think Xanadu is an extreme case of The Right Thing style of thinking, even if Xanadu would never have actually been Right: the creator still thought of it that way, and IMO that is one of the causes for the failure of the project to materialize.