Not to pick nits -- it's not the thrust of your argument -- but web browsers have a complex relationship with worse is better today. Yes, browsers started as a

Not to pick nits -- it's not the thrust of your argument -- but web browsers have a complex relationship with worse is better today. Yes, browsers started as a hack and it's reasonable to attribute a lot of their success to worse is better "survival characteristics". But having been in the trenches for a few years, I can say that these days, we operate primarily on the MIT approach. For example, WebSQL is worse-is-better; it was rejected in favor of IndexedDB, which is the "right way" (and was a ton more work). At least at Mozilla we were /obsessed/ with making the "right" api; a hack that we felt placed burden on users, like Unix's solution to the lusering problem, would be seriously looked down upon. Indeed I'd argue that the fact that so much work happens in standards bodies may be browsers' biggest concession to the "right way". There are, of course, plenty of modern counterexamples to this too. Like I say, it's a complex relationship...