5 ms·

The Rise of Worse is Better

• lkesteloot 13y ago
  JavaScript is classic worse-is-better.
  • dognotdog 13y ago
    JS is worse than what? why?
    • silentOpen 13y ago
      JS is worse than a competently designed and implemented language. This is because it was not competently designed and implemented.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  • brandonbloom 13y ago
    JavaScript is what makes me think that worse isn't better, it's just that worse is easier and immediate. "Worse" things happen sooner and with more frequency, so that means a greater chance that a worse thing will stumble upon what's actually most important. Turns out that brain dead code distribution was the most important thing. Similarly, brain dead web app deployment is what makes PHP so popular. Seems that when the web was born, "is available in some browsers" was better than "soon to be available in some browsers" and so JavaScript took off like a rocket. JavaScript doesn't get code distribution anywhere close to "the right thing", but it does it and it's ubiquitous, which is what's important if you want to reach people. After that, it's just a virtuous/vicious cycle.
    • andrewflnr 13y ago
      I think the point of "worse is better" is that "easier and immediate" is better.
• Avitas 13y ago
  The use of the word 'worse' is misleading. The article wanders. I do not feel it is worthwhile.
  • parallelist 13y ago
    I find the worse entirely accurate. This is a classic piece of programmer lore that goes a long way to describing why the software industry is the way it is today i.e. why everything sucks so much. My only criticism I have of it is that he mischaracterizes the-right-thing as being monolithically designed and slow performing (towards the end of the page). The-right-thing to me is always functionally and computationally superior, it just takes longer to make.
  • goblin89 13y ago
    I suspect the essay itself might be an example of worse-is-better principle applied in practice. :) My first impression was that author basically recommends quickly releasing ‘minimal viable products’ and expands on what should be considered ‘minimally viable’ for some specific kinds of software. ‘Worse is better’ is an interesting way to put it, though. I think it can be applied widely. One way to avoid perfectionism is to constantly remind ourselves what's important, what's in MVP. Sure, there are a lot of things that are important for good product, but some are more important and we should focus on them first. On the other hand, we can just remember that ‘worse is better’. No need to make yourself focus on what's important—it will come naturally once you label everything else ‘worse’. It's hard to explain and I may have missed author's point, but that was one of takeaways for me.
  • dtp 13y ago
    The word "worse" might be worse than some other term Gabriel could have picked. But this article (written in 1989) was really pretty influential at the time, and cemented the phrase "worse is better" in a lot of peoples' minds. The article even has its own Wikipedia page. Apart from whatever merits it might or might not have in itself, I think it's a worthwhile read because it made an impression on a lot of people back in 1989. It's one of the first explicit attempts to discuss the "Unix philosophy."
  • gruseom 13y ago
• petercooper 13y ago
  Or the attributes that define whether something is good or not are not the same as they used to be.
• lispm 13y ago
  No, worse is better is worse. http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf
  • nabla9 13y ago
    But is worse really better? http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf
  • alayne 13y ago
    For anyone who isn't aware, this essay was also written by Richard P. Gabriel under a pseudonym as a rebuttal to his earlier worse is better paper.
    • parallelist 13y ago
      On http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html Gabriel talks about the difficulty he had in deciding whether worse really is better and that he wrote various documents taking opposing positions
  • omilu 13y ago
    done is best
  • omilu 13y ago
    done is best
• interstitial 13y ago
  Atwood has some of the best worse-is-better essays I've ever read, some dating back a decade: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/08/worse-is-better.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/08/worse-is-better.htm... It's peppered throughout his writing, and he really gets it.
• andrewflnr 13y ago
  It's interesting that in the development of a single project, in the prototyping phase it really is better to just get something done, even if it's crappy. But as you go on, you want to pay off the technical debt, clean things up, and finish with a polished product. Which philosophy is better is a function of what phase of the project you're at. It's possible, and I'm hoping it's true, that "worse is better" is a property of the current phase of growth of the computer industry, not a general principle of software. I'm hoping we can reach the finished product stage in my lifetime.
• joemocquant 13y ago
  The author points out that "worse" opposed to "the right thing" is better in terms of life expectancy. As being simpler, "worse" has better survival characteristics to evolve toward something satisfying (opposed to the extreme difficulty to figure out the right thing from the first attempt). This is totally similar to the lean startup methodology in use today. Making something "worse" reduce the length of the feedback loop, allowing more flexibility, thus being better positioned to survive. Javascript is a good example as the REPL (read eval print loop) allow beginners to start and see results right away which is very encouraging and easier to assimilate.