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This article was originally written with a critical tone of C & Unix, it said they have a lot of problems, but with a 50% functionality, a lot of people had acc
by segfaultbuserr 7y ago
This article was originally written with a critical tone of C & Unix, it said they have a lot of problems, but with a 50% functionality, a lot of people had accepted it as good enough, then spreaded it like "the ultimate computer viruses". After it's publication, many Unix people reinterpreted it as a celebration of Unix's successful apporach since then.
I always strongly dislike JavaScript for its inconsistencies and ugly syntax, I found the tendency that everything now comes with a JavaScript engine and force developing in JavaScript regardless of their native programming language is unfortunately, and I always dreamed that the alternative timeline which Scheme became the language of the web.
But I've changed my position in recent years, because of this article. Now I think the same principle applies to JavaScript. It was something with a 50% functionality, and so it became the ultimate virus on the Web, and since then, a huge amount of manpower was spent on improving JavaScript. As a result, it still has the same inconsistencies from its original design, but overall, due to all the efforts, the overall usability is actually higher than alternative systems with a "cleaner" / "better" design. Just like a Unix-like OS like FreeBSD or Linux is still one of the most usable systems in existence. So I think I'd just accept JavaScript...
- jstimpfle 7y ago> After it's publication, many Unix people reinterpreted it as a celebration of Unix's successful apporach since then. The other comment below links this: https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf Look on book page 219 (224 in my pdf viewer), and read around the section that starts with "It is far better to have an underfeatured product that is rock solid ..." It's probably not a "reinterpretation of the Unix people". More like, the author did too good of a job by not taking sides explicitly, so everyone just interpreted it the way they liked. If anything, the author argued why "worse is better" is really better. To take the "Worse" approach just means to "not take all the unnecesssary effort" which will result in a product that exists. In other words, it's an essay about how big bang approaches don't work out.