Worse Is Better

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Richard P. Gabriel
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The concept known as "worse is better" holds that in software making (and perhaps in other arenas as well) it is better to start with a minimal creation and grow it as needed. Christopher Alexander might call this "piecemeal growth." This is the story of the evolution of that concept. This is the cr...

The concept known as "worse is better" holds that in software making (and perhaps in other arenas as well) it is better to start with a minimal creation and grow it as needed. Christopher Alexander might call this "piecemeal growth." This is the story of the evolution of that concept.

This is the crux of the essay: The Rise of Worse is Better.

From 1984 until 1994 I had a Lisp company called "Lucid, Inc." In 1989 it was clear that the Lisp business was not going well, partly because the AI companies were floundering and partly because those AI companies were starting to blame Lisp and its implementations for the failures of AI. One day in Spring 1989, I was sitting out on the Lucid porch with some of the hackers, and someone asked me why I thought people believed C and Unix were better than Lisp. I jokingly answered, "because, well, worse is better." We laughed over it for a while as I tried to make up an argument for why something clearly lousy could be good.

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Sriram Krishnan 9mos

Richard Gabriel’s “Worse is Better” is one of the most influential essays I’ve ever read in terms of shaping my thinking on tech.

Venkatesh Rao 7mos

It’s a classic software essay about how seemingly “worse” software (= “worse”/slouchy economic system) according to idealists keeps beating “better” “thoughtfully” designed software (=non-slouchy utopian economic systems). Highly recommend,