The Rise of "Worse is Better"
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#2Richard Gabriel's thoughts on the whole thing: http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#3Cute. This is the same screed that was delivered in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at MIT back when it was still taught (in Scheme, and this was in 1996!). I guess it is a balm for all the Scheme-heads that perhaps wondered why their language lost, and is still out there.
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#4that totally left me hanging -- I want to hear more about the diamond!
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#5I'm the author of LoseThos, http://www.losethos.com
Take a look at this:
http://wiki.osdev.org/Projects
Do a Google search for "64-bit operating system" and look at this:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=139584862753417
-----------------------------------------------
LoseThos is not a teaching OS. That's for Losers.
LoseThos is not for old hardware. Ditto.
LoseThos is for recreational programming. I know what makes programming fun. Worrying about absurd corner cases is "yeah, yeah yeah... not fun."
Bureaucracy where you have to update many streams as you program -- help, resources, multiple architectures etc. Sucks. LoseThos has graphics in source code and documentation is in the code for Man (WordStat).
Cheap read-neck thrills along the same line as "User=Loser" is fun. You have full access to everything.
Security is not fun. Who wants to fiddle with permissions.
Here's a summary of the LoseThos approach: http://www.losethos.com/doc/Strategy.html
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#6A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.
-- John Gall
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#7You know, this almost reminds me of the ML vs. Haskell debate. I remember fondly, hearing the 15-312 kids talk about how ML is right and everything else is wrong. The CMU PL dept was kind of adorable that way.
One of the classic examples is Haskell's typeclasses. Haskell's typeclasses are kinda kludgy because there's no way to provide more than one instance of a typeclass. ML's functors are way better.
But as it turns out, most of the time, we just need one instance. It's much simpler to invoke, and much easier to understand. If you need more than one instance, then use newtype.
In the end, we wouldn't be where we are in PL without the crazy folks at CMU and Bell labs. So I feel no small amount of sadness that ML didn't win. I concede the notion that ML may have made better design choices. But what matters more to me is that elements of FP get into the mainstream. Here, Haskell has done a better job of showing what is good with FP.
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#8Cute. This is the same screed that was delivered in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at MIT back when it was still taught (in Scheme, and this was in 1996!). I guess it is a balm for all the Scheme-heads that perhaps wondered why their language lost, and is still out there.
This is one of the first papers gone over in Computer Systems (6.033) so it's not totally gone.
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#9You know, this almost reminds me of the ML vs. Haskell debate. I remember fondly, hearing the 15-312 kids talk about how ML is right and everything else is wrong. The CMU PL dept was kind of adorable that way. One of the classic examples is Haskell's typeclasses. Haskell's typeclasses are kinda kludgy because there's no way to provide more than one instance of a typeclass. ML's functors are way better. But as it turn…
You have to concede it's a bit funny that you're pointing to Haskell as an example of the 'worse-is-better' approach that leads to viral adoption of dirty solutions over the endless pursuit of perfection.
Re: The Rise of "Worse is Better"
#10Cute. This is the same screed that was delivered in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at MIT back when it was still taught (in Scheme, and this was in 1996!). I guess it is a balm for all the Scheme-heads that perhaps wondered why their language lost, and is still out there.
I took this class 4 years ago in UMass Amherst. In Scheme. I loved it.