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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#151

Post by kragen »

susam wrote: post #111
kragen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prolog, Dylan, Julia, and R are stuff like Lisp, Tcl, and Rebol. I don't know about Erlang, and I don't know what pjmlp means by "Lisp-2", which I normally interpret as meaning a Lisp with different namespaces for functions and variables, following Steele's terminology.

> ... I don't know what pjmlp means by "Lisp-2", which I normally interpret as meaning a Lisp with different namespaces for functions and variables ... There indeed was a language named LISP 2 : https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1464291.1464362 I posted it on HN two weeks ago but it didn't get much traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41640147

Aha, thanks!

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#152

Post by bbor »

ezekiel68 wrote: post #125

I'm always happy whenever this old article goes viral. For two reasons: First, learning to accept the fact that the better solutions doesn't always win has helped me keep may sanity over more than two decades in the tech industry. And second, I'm old enough to have a pretty good idea what the guy meant when he replied, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."

I’m glad to know a new article that “everyone knows”! Thanks for pointing out the age.

And, at the risk of intentionally missing the metaphor: they do in fact make automated tenderizers, now ;) https://a.co/d/hybzu2U

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#153

Post by fanf2 »

chuckadams wrote: post #129
kragen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OSI stack was also designed using the packet-switching approach. Rob Graham's "OSI Deprogrammer" is a book -length article about how TCP/IP beat OSI, and how the OSI model is entirely worthless: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iL0fYmMmariFoSvLd9U5nPVH... I'm not sure he's right, but I do think his point of view is important to understand.

Wow, you're not kidding about book-length: at 246 pages, that's an epic takedown. Learning all kinds of other things about networking along the way, though. I do remember all nine layers of the OSI stack though: physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application, financial, political.

BTDTGTTS https://shop.isc.org/collections/shirts/products/osi-9-layer...

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#154

Post by ambicapter »

KerrAvon wrote: post #136
dkarl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

I think this is misleading -- geoengineering + social change will be necessary. You're not going to Scotty your way out of climate change.

What's misleading here? He was using that as an example of usage of the word 'expedient', not actually suggesting climate change solutions.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#155

Post by kragen »

pjmlp wrote: post #118
kragen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAX Pascal is viable for systems programming (though standard Pascal wasn't). I only ever used VAX BASIC a tiny bit; was it interpreted like microcomputer BASICs? That made BASIC a nonstarter for "serious software" in the 80s. Not having records, local variables, or subroutine parameters was also a pretty big problem, but maybe VAX BASIC fixed that. I wasn't paying for access to VMS either; it just didn't hold a cand…

No one really uses standard C for systems programming, yet that always applies to other languages. There is always Assembly, compiler extensions, or OS specific APIs, as part of the deliverable. Funny how UNIX folks always have these two weights approach. I beg to differ in wax quality for candles, but if we get to do juice with bitter lemons, so be it. At least is refreshing during Summer.

Do you know if VAX BASIC fixed the problems I mentioned in BASIC? Was it interpreted?

K&R C has separate compilation, pointer casting, a usable but janky and bug-prone variable-length string type, variadic functions, static variables, literal data of array and record types, bitwise operations, a filesystem access API, and an array iterator type. None of those require "assembly, compiler extensions, or OS specific APIs." (Well, I'm not sure if they specified variadic functions in the book. The first ANSI C did.)

Jensen & Wirth Pascal has none of those, making it completely inadequate for anything beyond classroom use, which was what it was designed for.

Each Pascal implementation that was used for systems programming did of course add all of these features, but many of them added them in incompatible ways, with the result that, for example, TeX had to implement its own string type (in WEB).

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#156

Post by PhilipRoman »

karel-3d wrote: post #29

I remember when I had a lesson about OSI layers, where the teacher has carefully described all the layers in detail and then said something like "most of this is not important, these layers don't really exist, TCP/IP got popular first because it's just much simpler than OSI was"

IMO the OSI layer system (even though using TCP/IP suite) has some merit in education. To most of us, the concept of layering protocols may seem obvious, but I've talked to people who are just learning this stuff, and they have a lot of trouble understanding it. Emphasizing that each layer is (in theory) cleanly separated and doesn't know about layers above and below, is a very useful step towards understanding abstractions.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#157

Post by foobarian »

fanf2 wrote: post #119
pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there's an entirely different feature-length article to be written/found about how packet switching beat circuit switching and the "Internet approach" beat the telco approach. The great innovation of being able to deploy devices at the edges without needing clearance from the center. I don't think very many people even remember X25. The one survivor from all the X standards seems to be X509?

LDAP is “lightweight” compared to the X.500 directory access protocol. LDAP DNs are basically the same as X.500 DNs. SNMP is “simple” compared to X.711 CMIP. But SNMP also uses ASN.1 and X.660 OIDs.

I finally understand why OSI failed, it's the naming! Dear lord.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#158

Post by kragen »

anthk wrote: post #109
pjmlp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Lisp came out in 1958, and ESPOL/NEWP in 1961, PL/I and its derivates, predating C by a decade. Had AT&T been allowed to charge real money for UNIX, and the Worse is Better would never happened.

Imagine if RMS brought Lisp OS with Emacs not being bound to GNU/Unix. JITted Emacs since the 2000 and Eshell as the default CLI, with a floating WM as an easy desktop. Multithreaded, own modules for images/PDF and whatever. No need for security, daily backups and rollbacks would be granted. Today you would be 'rewinding in time' from Emacs if any attack happened.

Vaporware can always be better than actually existing software because vaporware doesn't have bugs or schedule/scope tradeoffs.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#159

Post by skribanto »

pif wrote: post #88
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a weird take on HN. Lisp should be experimented with if only to appreciate the profound beauty of a small, powerful, cohesive design. It is a wholly different feeling from industry standard languages which are constantly changing. In Lisp, almost all of the language’s power is in “user space.” The ramifications for that are deep and your beliefs as to whether that is good are largely shaped by whether you believ…

> languages which are constantly changing They change because they are used.

Well the main point is that there are changes that for most languages would need a change in the compiler/interpreter itself. However in lisp those kinds of things can be done in userspace

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#160

Post by d0mine »

hammock wrote: post #43

There was an article posted on here[1] a while back that I only just found again, introducing the term "expedience." The idea was that we think we live in a world where people have to have "the best" sweater, be on "the best" social network, drive "the best" car, etc. But when you look at what really WINS, it's not the best, it's the most "expedient" - i.e. sufficiently good, with built-in social proof, inoculated of…

There is also "satisficing" (vs. maximizing).

Your model of the world is not perfect so instead of trying to find a globally optimal solution, you are satisfied with a local optimum that exceeds some threshold that has to suffices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

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